Arab refugees main victims of bombing

Press, 12 November 1977, Page 8

Arab refugees main victims of bombing

Bv GAVIN BELL

NZPA-Reuter correspondent Azziyeh, (Lebanon).

Israeli air raids against south Lebanon have wiped out a hamlet of Lebanese war refugees while a Palestinian guerrilla camp nearby escaped without a single hit. During a tour of the area on Thursday, I found this civilian settlement had suffered by far the worst of the Israeli onslaught.

Local residents said at least 60 people, many of them women and children, died when four Israeli Skyhawks pounded their makeshift homes for 30 minutes.

In a separate raid by two Phantom aircraft, a Lebanese woman and a child were killed when bombs rained on a row of well-built residences on the outskirts of a Palestinian refugee camp. Informed sources said the total guerrilla casualties were six dead in an attack by the Phantoms on a mili-; tary camp in nearby hills. I found no evidence to support Palestinian claims, and initial eyewitness re-'

ports that Palestinian refugee camps had been hit by the air raids and heavy artillery from Israel. There was no doubt, however, that the 300 Lebanese refugees living in Azziyeh had been the main victims of the bombing. Heaps of boulders and scraps of burnt wood were all that remained of the ramshackle dwellings built by people who had fled their homes further south after Israeli shelling six months ago. The blackened hulk of an old car lay near a pile of rubble and a few steps away, relatives of the dead carefully avoided the massive bulk of an unexploded 450 kg bomb. I counted at least 15 giant craters, measuring about 5m deep, in the rocky soil. But their declared targets, Palestinian guerrillas from an adjacent base in the surrounding hills, wandered curiously among the ruins. The informed sources said it was this base and another in the vicinity from which Katyusha rockets were fired at the Israeli resort town of

Nahariyeh earlier in the week. Israel has claimed its air raids were directed against military targets in retaliation for the rocket attacks, in which three people were killed. Their only apparent success was a guerrilla camp in the hills near the village of Abu Al-Aswad, a few kilometres north of Azziyeh. I w r as not allowed to visit the area, but the sources said it was there that six of the guerrillas were killed. The third strike fell on the outskirts of the Borj elShemali Palestinian refugee camp near the ancient port city of Tyre. Local residents said casualties there had been light ! because most people had fled their homes as soon as they heard the Israeli planes <screaming down on Azziyeh. The Lebanese Government issued a statement “strongly condemning” the raids and expressing the hope that all parties concerned would support moves to restore peace to the aouthi ,