The Reagan Administration maintained today that the U.S. rejected an Israeli offer of its hospital facilities for the marines wounded in yesterday’s terrorist bomb attack in Beirut because the military was following its “normal” procedure for evacuating the wounded.
White House spokesman Larry Speakes said the wounded were “initially treated” at battalion field hospitals and aboard U.S. Navy ships off the Lebanese coast and then taken to U.S. naval hospital facilities in Naples or to the army hospital in West Germany.
“That’s the standard procedure, the way the military operates in that part of the world,” Speakes said. “There is no other reason.” According to Speakes, 75 wounded marines and sailors had been evacuated from Lebanon so far. The death toll stood at 183 as of noon Eastern Daylight Time, he said.
According to reports from Beirut, most of the wounded were taken by helicopter to the two Jima, an amphibious assault ship, the battleship New Jersey and the El Paso, an amphibious cargo ship. A marine spokesman was quoted as saying that an additional 21 men were flown by the British for treatment at a Royal Air Force base in Cyprus.
The reports also said that some dead and wounded were taken to a dozen different hospitals in Beirut, including the Shiite-run Al Zahra hospital which has bum treatment facilities.
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