Terrorists Slaughter 18, Wound 15 in Kiryat Shemona During 4-hour Rampage

Three Arab terrorists massacred 18 people–eight of them children–and wounded 15 others–including two policemen, three border patrol guards and three soldiers–during a four-hour rampage with machine guns, bazooka and grenades today in this town of 15,000 in Upper Galilee near the Lebanese border. The terrorists were killed by Israeli security forces. They belonged to a group calling itself “The Popular Front–The General Command” headed by Ahmed Jabril with head-quarters in Beirut, Lebanon, the same gang which claimed it had perpetrated the slaughter of children in a school bus near Avivim three years ago.

Funeral services for the victims will be held tomorrow. At least two of the dead were soldiers, the rest mostly women and children who were mowed down by automatic fire or grenades. Several soldiers were among the wounded. Considerable damage was done to buildings in the town. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan rushed to the scene by helicopter from a Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. He was accompanied by Acting Chief of Staff Gen. Yitzhak Hofi. About 300 townspeople demonstrated in the streets after the massacre to protest alleged lack of security measures. Kiryat Shemona which has a large immigrant population, has been a frequent target of terrorist assaults from Lebanese territory in recent years.

REPORTS BY EYEWITNESSES

According to accounts of the tragedy pieced together from eyewitness reports and reports by security forces and municipal authorities, the terrorists infiltrated across the Lebanese border during the night and invaded the town in the early morning hours. They occupied a school building, empty over the Passover holiday and began shooting wildly at passers-by shortly after 9 a.m. local time.

When security forces rushed to the scene, the terrorists escaped down a hill and occupied a four-story apartment building facing the Lebanese border some seven kilometers to the north, murdering many of the occupants in their flats. According to eyewitnesses, they tossed the bodies of their victims–including children–out of windows. The terrorists barricaded themselves on the top floor of the building and fired machine guns, Kalachnikof automatic rifles and grenades into the street. They hit a police armored car and a military half-track while spraying passers-by with automatic fire.

Israeli security forces surrounded the building. Acting under the direct supervision of Hofi. Gen. Motta Gur, commander of the northern command and national police chief Shaul Rozolio, they fired bazooka shells and recoilless cannon into the fourth floor flat. Paratroopers prepared to storm the building when the terrorists ignored a loudspeaker demand to surrender.

At that point, an explosion tore through the flat, possibly the result of a direct hit. Israeli soldiers entering the wrecked apartment found the bodies of three Arab terrorists (one report said four) sprawled on the floor. Dayan entered the building a few minutes later. He refused to reply to questions before receiving a report from the local commanders.

An army spokesman later denied an allegation by the terrorist group in Beirut that the terrorists had taken hostages and demanded the release of 100 of their comrades in Israeli prisons, including Kozo Okamoto, the surviving terrorist of the Lod Airport massacre two years ago. The terrorists made no demands and took no hostages, the spokesman said. He said they left leaflets in Hebrew extolling murder as a way to get back their “stolen lands.” The terrorist group is commanded by former Syrian army officers. The authorities reported that only one of the 15 wounded is in a serious condition. Three others were reported out of danger and the remaining 11 were listed as slightly wounded. The injured were hospitalized in Safad.

CORPSES AT EVERY ENTRANCE

One of the eyewitnesses, Itzhak Safra, told this correspondent he heard people screaming that the terrorists were killing children. Though shooting was still going on in the upper floor of the occupied building, he said, he did not hesitate and entered the apartment. “We saw corpses at every entrance. Children, one a three-year-old, lay bullet-riddled in their beds where they had been sprayed with gunfire.”

This correspondent learned that the Arab killers, coming from Lebanese territory, were detected by border police, who began pursuit. The killers raced to the township elementary school building and found it empty because of the Passover holiday. They managed to reach an apartment building on the northern outskirt of Kiryat Shemona where they systematically forced open every door and killed everyone they found. At that hour, most of the men were at work and only women and children were at home. They were slaughtered in cold blood.

Bodies of victims were sprawled on doorsteps, on beds and under beds, in the children’s rooms and in the kitchens, on the staircase and in the yard. There was blood on the staircase and in the apartments. A woman’s blood-soaked apron lay at the door to a flat where a mother of three was slaughtered.

Amram Peretz, 21, who was among the first to start rescue activities even while firing was continuing, said that he saw a man sobbing and yelling that “they slaughtered my children.” Peretz said he rushed with the man into the flat and found wounded and dead children. The man’s wife was fatally injured. The man pulled his dying wife and one wounded child to the basement where he covered them with his body, refusing to be parted from them.