Terrorists Killed Near Kibbutz After Infiltrating from Lebanon

Two Palestinian terrorists who entered Israel from southern Lebanon were killed Sunday night in a brief skirmish with Israel Defense Force soldiers about two miles northeast of Kibbutz Dan in Upper Galilee.

There were no Israeli casualties.

Army sources said the weapons and equipment found on the bodies, along with maps and sketches, indicated the intruders’ mission was to attack an Israeli settlement and take hostages.

It was the first time in more than two years that the Israeli border has been penetrated from Lebanon.

But the Lebanese regular army says it is waging a campaign against Palestinian terrorists operating against Israel from Lebanon.

The Lebanese army announced Sunday in Beirut that its forces intercepted and detained four Palestinians identified as members of George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who were on their way to attack IDF forces in the border security zone in southern Lebanon.

According to the Beirut announcement, a subsequent search of the village of Kilya yielded two more PFLP members in hiding there.

The encounter near Kibbutz Dan occurred only a few hundred yards from the Lebanese border, in the foothills of Mount Hermon, shortly before 9 p.m. local time.

IDF forces were sent to investigate a breach in the border fence, while the kibbutz was alerted to the presence of infiltrators by code words broadcast over its public address system.

IRAQI THREATS BLAMED

Sources of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon stationed in southern Lebanon reported that Israeli air force planes and helicopters dropped flares in the area for the next several hours to assist ground troops searching for other intruders inside Israel and in the border security zone.

Defense Minister Moshe Arens, meanwhile, attributed the increased terrorist activity along Israel’s borders to the threats made by Saddam Hussein of Iraq last year to “annihilate Israel.”

Those threats encouraged hostile elements in Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt, Arens said Monday.

He noted that at the start of the Persian Gulf war in January, King Hussein of Jordan issued arms to the new “popular army,” which was to serve as a civil guard.

Now those Kalachnikov rifles are being carried into Israel by infiltrators, Arens said. But he credited King Hussein with a desire to curb attacks on Israel from Jordanian soil.

He said the Hashemite king was doing his best, although his authority has been eroded by the spread of Islamic and nationalistic extremism in Jordan.

Arens said the southern Lebanon security zone has been of great value. There have been no civilian casualties along the Lebanese border for nine years, although the IDF has suffered casualties, he said.