Israel Air Force planes attacked terrorist bases in south Lebanon today and returned safely to their bases, a military spokesman announced. The attacks were in retaliation for a rash of terrorist bombings in Israel, the most recent being an explosion yesterday in East Jerusalem which injured four Arabs and two Jews.
The spokesman said the air strike was aimed at terrorist bases and training camps in the Dahar el-Burj, Kassmiyeh and Burj el-Shimali regions of south Lebanon. The bases were described by Israel as spring-boards for terrorist assaults against Israeli civilians. The air attack began at 4 p.m. local time and lasted 15 minutes, the spokesman said. He said there were scores of terrorists in buildings and tents at the bases.
Yesterday’s bombing occurred near the Jaffa Gate in the Old City. An explosive device went off just outside an Arab butcher’s shop where it had been concealed in a case of soda bottles, the police said. None of the injured was seriously hurt and only slight damage was done to the property. The shopkeeper, Mohammed Kudsi, said he checked his store every morning for suspicious looking parcels but found none.
Security sources noted that 14 terrorist acts were perpetrated in Israel during the last six weeks in which four people were killed and 67 injured. These included the discovery of an explosive charge in Tel Aviv Nov. 5 which exploded shortly before police arrived; the Nov. 19 bombing of an Ein Gedi-to-Jerusalem bus in which four persons were killed and 38 injured when the bus stopped at Jericho; the injury of two people by a bomb explosion in Jaffa on the same date and last Sunday’s bomb explosion on a bus in the Bayit Vegan suburb of Jerusalem which injured 22 passengers.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
