The Karantina massacre took place early in the Lebanese Civil War on January 18, 1976. With the breakdown in authority of the Lebanese government the militancy of radical factions increased. Black Saturday preceded Karantina by six weeks.
Karantina was a predominantly Muslim slum district in Christian east Beirut controlled by forces of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), inhabited by Kurds, Syrians and Palestinians. The fighting and subsequent killings also involved an old quarantine area near the port and nearby Maslakh quarter.
Karantina was overrun by the Lebanese Christian militias, resulting in the deaths of approximately 1,000-1,500 people.
After Kataeb Regulatory Forces (KRF), Guardians of the Cedars (GoC), NLP Tiger militia and Lebanese Youth Movement (LYM) forces took control of the Karantina district on 18 January 1976, Tel al-Zaatar was placed under siege.
The Damour massacre was a reprisal for Karantina.
Famous quotes containing the word massacre:
“It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to exceed my loathing of the very nature of totalitarian states in which massacre is only an administrative detail.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)