The Operation
On April 9, 1973, Israeli Navy missile boats departed from Haifa naval base, carrying the commandos and Zodiac speedboats on board. When the missile boats reached the shores of Beirut, the Zodiacs were lowered into the water. To avoid being heard, they turned the motors off and rowed the rest of the way in when they were a few hundred meters from land. The commandos then landed on the shore where Mossad agents were waiting for them with three cars. The agents drove them to their targets.
When the Sayeret Matkal commandos approached the target apartments, three commando teams entered the buildings and planted explosive fuses at the doors of the apartments of each targets, while a backup team led by Barak remained outside and stood guard to repel PLO reinforcements or Lebanese police. When the fuses exploded, the commandos stormed the apartments, gunned down the three targets, and seized documents they found. Al-Najjar's wife was killed during the mêlée, as was an elderly Italian woman responding to the commotion. At the same time, the backup team engaged in a firefight with a few dozen Lebanese policemen and PLO reinforcements. Two Lebanese policemen were killed during the firefight. The responding forces were beaten back, and Mossad cars extracted the commandos. While driving to the beach, they encountered a Lebanese Army troop carrier as it scanned the shore. The vehicle did not confront them, and they continued towards the beach, where the commandos and drivers abandoned the cars and returned to the missile boats in Zodiacs.
At the same time, 14 Israeli commandos, mainly Sayeret Tzanhanim paratroopers, raided a multi-story building which housed militants of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The team was disguised as civilians and led by Amnon Lipkin-Shahak. The Israeli team met strong resistance early on from nearly 100 militants guarding it, and engaged in a close-quarters battle. Teams of PFLP gunmen on the building's upper floors repeatedly attempted to take the elevator to the ground floor and join the battle, but each team was wiped out by commandos waiting near the doors. The team managed to place a large explosive charge inside the building and detonate it, causing part of the building to collapse. Lipkin-Shahak then requested an air evacuation. The commandos were then extracted by Israeli Air Force helicopters. Two Israeli soldiers and dozens of PFLP fighters were killed during the operation.
Two secondary forces attacked the Fatah headquarters for Gaza operations and a Fatah workshop in south Beirut. A third force of Shayetet 13 naval commandos landed in north Beirut and destroyed a small Fatah explosives workshop, while another paratroop unit raided and destroyed the PLO's main garage, located just south of Sidon.
Read more about this topic: 1973 Israeli Raid On Lebanon
Famous quotes containing the word operation:
“Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.”
—Francis Bacon (1560–1626)
“Waiting for the race to become official, he began to feel as if he had as much effect on the final outcome of the operation as a single piece of a jumbo jigsaw puzzle has to its predetermined final design. Only the addition of the missing fragments of the puzzle would reveal if the picture was as he guessed it would be.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)