lebanese war
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1975/1990
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141 news for the 4th, 18th, 28th of every month

with the books

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October 4, 1975saturday
Interior Security Forces held in check a land attack against the Beirut International Airport where 4 armed men tried to kidnap an airplane in order to go to Cairo.

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January 18, 1976sunday
Karantina massacre
Christian forces conquered Karantina, a slum district populated primarily by poor Kurds and Armenians but controlled by a PLO detachment. More than 1000 civilians were massacred.

\_this day in full the books also date it 16 January 1976, 19 January 1976, 20 January 1976, 22 January 1976 \_on this day

\_what the books add

Dates differ between historians: 16 January (Ménargues), 18 January (de Clerck and Malsagne; consistent with Fisk), 19 January (Hanf), 20 or 22 January (Traboulsi). Maslakh, next door, fell at the same time. Most of the district's people were Shi'is, living alongside Palestinians, Kurds and Armenian Lebanese. Haugbolle estimates 150-500 dead, de Clerck and Malsagne 600-1,000; some 30,000 people were driven out to West Beirut and the southern suburbs.

May 4, 1976tuesday
Air France suspended its flights. It was the last foreign airline that was still flying to Lebanon.

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June 18, 1976friday
Palestinian Progressive forces launched attacks against the Syrian forces positioned in Ain Zhalta and Ain Dara in order to stop their advance in the Chouf.

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June 18, 1976friday
President Gerald Ford ordered the US embassy in Beirut to evacuate urgently all US nationals in Lebanon who would like to return home.

\_this day in full the books also date it 16 June 1976 \_on this day

\_what the books add

Barely a tenth of American and British residents accepted the evacuation, Fisk writes. The British went by road, the PLO escorting them through West Beirut and a Libyan officer on to the Syrian lines; a day later a US landing craft took evacuees off from a PLO-guarded bathing club on the Corniche.

September 4, 1976saturday
Bleeding continued in the ports. Massive emigration went on in the same intensity. Hundreds of families flew every day by sea escaping from hell.

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Historians disagree on 1976: Haugbolle ranks it among the war's largest emigration waves, while de Clerck and Malsagne see many returning that year after nearly 400,000 Lebanese had left by 1975. Haugbolle notes that no official figures exist.

September 28, 1976tuesday
The Syrian forces and the Lebanese Forces launched an attack against the positions of the Palestinian Progressive forces in the mountain. This far-reaching attack aimed at dislodging the Common Forces from the crests they occupied in Sannine, Zaarour, Aintoura and Mtein. This assault was accompanied by an intensive bombing of Aley, the main Palestinian Progressive base in the mountain.

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From Sarkis's inauguration on 23 September Hanf counts three quiet days, the Semiramis Hotel attack in Damascus and a Syrian move two days after it, placing this offensive at about 28 September. The Palestinian and leftist forces lost the Upper Metn; Traboulsi notes that the Joint Forces' largest concentration, there under Abu Khalid al-Amleh, never engaged the advancing Syrians.

December 4, 1976saturday
A violent explosion hit the district of Mousseytbeh, where a bomb exploded next to Kamal Joumblatt's house, killing 4 persons and seriously injuring 20 others.

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February 4, 1977friday
The Government promulgated a decree concerning wartime conflicts between owners and renters.
The decree stipulated mainly that rent contracts remained operative, while backlogs will be staggered on 18 months with no interest for all rents under 5,000 Lebanese Pounds. As to destroyed properties, there were three possibilities: reconstruct, compensate the renters, or give them shares.

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February 28, 1977monday
A master plan for the souks of the old Beirut was submitted to the Council of Ministers. This project included the creation of a green front, an opening to the sea from the Saint George to Bahri, the construction of a port district around the first basin, the opening of avenues towards the sea, and the reconstruction of the souks.

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APUR, the Atelier parisien d'urbanisme, drew up this 1977 plan, the earliest of three reconstruction studies made during the war.

March 28, 1977monday
The Council of Ministers appointed Colonel Victor Khoury at the head of the army replacing General Hanna Said.

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Muslim leaders accused Hanna Saïd, commander since September 1975, of leniency towards the Lebanese Front (Traboulsi: of closeness to the dissident troops in the south). His replacement, Victor Khoury, a Constitutional Bloc sympathiser committed to Christian-Muslim coexistence, ran the army and its rebuilding from March 1977 to December 1982.

June 4, 1977saturday
The election of Miss Lebanon was organized at the Santa Teresa in Maameltein.

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September 28, 1977wednesday
Demis Roussos was back to Lebanon to give a concert. 'I am glad to be in Lebanon especially after what happened', he declared.

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April 28, 1978friday
A building collapsed on refugees from South Beirut causing tens of victims.

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June 4, 1978sunday
A 19 years old Lebanese pianist, Abdel Rahman El Bacha, won the longest and toughest international contest: the Queen Elisabeth Music Prize.

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June 28, 1978wednesday
A massacre of a unique atrocity was perpetrated in the North of the Bekaa region.
Forty persons from the Christian town of Kaa and its surroundings were kidnapped from their homes at night. 26 were executed at dawn, and their bodies were left in a mass grave. The Lebanese population and especially the Greek Catholic community, to which the victims belonged, were terrorized and distressed.

\_this day in full the books also date it 27 June 1978, 29 June 1978 \_on this day

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The Qaa massacre is dated to the night of 27-28 June (de Clerck and Malsagne) or to 29 June (Hanf); Ras Baalbek and Jdeidet al-Fakiha were also raided. De Clerck and Malsagne blame Syrians in civilian clothes, carrying name lists and guided by local Christian members of the SSNP and the Communist Party, and see the killings as revenge for Ehden. Hanf counts 26 dead, de Clerck and Malsagne 32 to 36. The community's Supreme Council asked that a day of national mourning be held.

July 28, 1978friday
US nationals were evacuated and this was worrying for the Lebanese population.

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August 28, 1978monday
A Syrian-Israeli war in Lebanon seemed likely to happen, but the US intervened to moderate the two countries.

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September 28, 1978thursday
It is the famous ' Black Thursday ' where hundreds of shells hit Achrafieh in a murderous frenzy that did not spare anyone. The Arab Strike Force and the Lebanese Front accused each other of being responsible of this nightmare, while women, children and elderly persons were dying.

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October 4, 1978wednesday
The bombardments reached Bikfaya and Beit-Mery while in East Beirut there was a shortage of food and medications. The Security Council called for the urgent ending of the combats.

\_this day in full the books also date it 6 October 1978 \_on this day

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According to de Clerck and Malsagne, the Security Council's call for a ceasefire came on 6 October.

November 4, 1978saturday
While the situation improved on the ground, Damascus liberated Ahmed Khatib, previously chief of the Army of Arab Lebanon.

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February 28, 1979wednesday
Saudi troops decided to withdraw from the Arabic Strike Force. The Lebanese tried to dissuade them.

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The Saudis announced their departure in March 1979 (Ménargues). Picard has Syria's partners, among them Saudis, Sudanese and Emiratis, leaving two years after the 1976 summits; de Clerck and Malsagne call the ADF wholly Syrian from 1979.

April 18, 1979wednesday
An army battalion deployed in the UNIFL zone in the South, despite bombardments by Saad Haddad’s militias against the Lebanese soldiers. The latter have come all the way from Yarze. The same day, the rebel officer Saad Haddad proclaimed the State of Free Lebanon. He was dismissed from the Lebanese army the following day.

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De Clerck and Malsagne and Picard agree that Haddad declared his 'State of Free Lebanon' at Marjayoun on 18 April 1979, in reaction to the army being sent towards the UNIFIL area under the March 1979 defence law; de Clerck and Malsagne put its size at 250 square kilometres and call it entirely reliant on Israel. Hanf has Haddad's troops stopping the battalion; de Clerck and Malsagne and Picard, Israeli aircraft bombing it; Fisk, Israel letting its militia shell it. Traboulsi dates Haddad's break to his Army of Free Lebanon of June 1976, Ménargues to a secession at the end of 1977. Hanf adds that once Haddad had lost his rank and been dismissed in disgrace, Israel paid his men.

May 28, 1979monday
100,000 civilians flew towards Saida, Zahrani, the Chouf and Beirut due to the Israeli bombardments.

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June 4, 1979monday
Pierre Gemayel, Chief of the Phalange Party, escaped a killing attack in Nahr el Kalb.
The explosion slightly injured his head and killed one person and wounded about 10.

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June 28, 1979thursday
The Arab Strike Force mandate was renewed for 6 months.

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October 4, 1979thursday
A light earthquake shook the region of Saida without any victim.

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October 4, 1979thursday
The Minister of Foreign affairs, Fouad Boutros, called upon the United Nations to end Israeli aggressions in the South, to freeze the activities of the Fedayin, to reinforce the UNIFL, and to dissociate the Lebanese problem from the regional crisis.

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October 28, 1979sunday
Israel stiffened its position.
While Hoss discussed with Abou Ayad a Lebanese Palestinian understanding platform, Israel laid two conditions for peace: the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon and the end of Palestinian raids, according to what Menahem Begin affirmed to the American delegate, Philip Habib in Jerusalem.

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January 18, 1980friday
A Shiite hijacked an MEA Boeing 707.
This airplane flying from Beirut to Larnaca had 72 passengers and 10 crewmembers onboard. The hijacker surrendered to the Lebanese authorities and claimed, in a press conference, the intensification of the efforts in order to find Imam Moussa Sadr. He also requested the positioning of the Lebanese army in South of Lebanon.

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March 4, 1980tuesday
The mutilated body of Selim Laouzi was found in the forests of Aramoun ten days after his kidnapping.

\_this day in full the books also date it 5 March 1980 \_on this day

\_what the books add

Fisk reads the mutilation of al-Lawzi's body as a warning to the Lebanese press: the flesh of his writing hand had been removed, by knife or acid, and two shots fired into his neck from behind. A shepherd found him, half under snow, in the Aramoun woods on 5 March.

March 18, 1980tuesday
The population protested in vain against the use of the Normandy bay in Beirut as a garbage dumping site.

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April 18, 1980friday
The South was still bleeding. 18 persons were killed in an Israeli raid against Sarafand and Adloun.

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April 18, 1980friday
A car bomb exploded at Kabb Elias killing 9 persons and wounding 30 others.

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May 28, 1980wednesday
200 persons were poisoned in Tyr after drinking polluted water.

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July 4, 1980friday
Artillery duels and armed confrontations continued between the Phalange Party and the NLP in the regions of Wadi-Chahrour, Betchay, Bsous,Kfarchima, and their surroundings. 16 persons were killed and 20 others wounded. The next day, the Lebanese army took in charge the areas of Wadi-Chahrour, Betchay, Bsous, Kfarchima, Bsaba, and Bleibel in the Southern-Metn, ending the conflict between the Phalange Party and the NLP in the region.

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\_what the books add

De Clerck and Malsagne list Wadi Chahrour and Kfarchima among the National Liberals' bases in Beirut's south-eastern suburbs and end the wave of clashes between Christian militias on 2 July 1980. Ménargues describes near-daily fighting in the second half of June. Bashir Gemayel settled the rivalry by force on 7 July.

January 18, 1981sunday
Jean Francois Revel, the director of the French weekly magazine L'Express, left Beirut after a 48-hour visit. He declared before his departure: 'The actual drama in Lebanon is the result of the convergence of external factors rather than an internal crisis'.

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January 28, 1981wednesday
President Elias Sarkis delivered a speech at the Third Islamic States Summit in Taef, where he headed the Lebanese delegation. He declared: 'Lebanon cannot bear anymore the Palestinian armed presence on its land'.

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February 4, 1981wednesday
Four Lebanese militaries were killed in a helicopter accident. The Aircraft crashed on the hills of Sannine.

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February 18, 1981wednesday
The Council of Ministers centered part of its deliberations to the Sodeco region that was catching fire on a daily basis. Chafic Wazzan pledged to cease the fire.

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