Israelis pull out of Lebanon

Press, 15 April 1980, Page 8

Israelis pull out of Lebanon

NZPA-Reuter Tel Aviv I Israel has pulled its forces out of the southern Lebanese territory they penetrated last I Wednesday, an Israeli Army ! spokesman has said. “Our forces returned to Israeli territory after completing their mission in south Lebanon," the spokesman said. Israel sent troops across the frontier in response to Palestinian guerrilla attacks like the one last week on a northern border commune in which three Israelis and the five raiders were killed. The Israeli, spokesman did not say what the mission had been but earlier statements said they included patrols several kilometres deep inside Lebanon. The United Nations had said that the Israeli force included up to 350 men and about 18 tanks and a similar number of armoured personnel carriers. The United Nations said the Israeli soldiers had dug trenches and surrounded them with barbed wire. A Earlier yesterday, south Lebanese villagers vowed re-

venge on the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon for allegedly killing two local civilians and a Christian militiaman in a gunbattle at the week-end. After the violent clash between' militiamen and Irish United Nations troops near the village of Al-Tiri, a meeting was held between the commander of Israel’s northern front, BrigadierGeneral Avigdor Ben-Gal, the U.N.IJ’.I.L. chief, General Emanuel Erskine, of Nigeria, and the Christian commander, Saad Haddad. An Israeli spokesman said another meeting would be held, probably today, in a further effort to defuse the tension in the war-shattered zone. In an atmosphere of extreme tension, the Irish exchanged two militiamen for four United Nations soldiers taken prisoner by the militia forces commanded by Major Haddad. “The villagers wanted to kill them in. revenge fori/ttye deaths of the youths but Al managed to restrain them,” Major Haddad told reporters.