116 news for the 4th, 20th, 31st of every month
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Violent confrontations opposed Palestinians from the Tell El Zaatar camp and Phalange Party members. Businesses were closed in protest against the lack of security.
Avenging the massacre of Karantina by Christian forces 2 days before, Palestinians and leftist Muslims attacked the Christian city of Damour, located about 20 kilometers south of Beirut, and murdered 350 civilians.
\_this day in full the books also date it 9 January 1976, 16 January 1976, 19 January 1976, 22 January 1976, 24 January 1976 \_on this day
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The siege of Damour had begun on 9 January, before the fall of Karantina; the main massacre began on 20 January (Hanf, Ménargues, Fisk, de Clerck and Malsagne; Traboulsi gives 22 or 24 January). Jiyeh fell the same day. The attackers were mainly PLA, Saiqa and Fatah units, with Lebanese leftist parties. Estimates of the dead range from about 150 bodies found plus 200 missing (Fisk) and 300-584 (de Clerck and Malsagne) to about 900 (Ménargues); some 5,000 people fled by land and sea.
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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.
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Israel, Hanf notes, would accept no Arab troops south of the 'red line', Syrian ones least of all. When a Syrian unit entered Nabatiyeh in January 1977, an Israeli protest got it withdrawn and the Palestinians kept the town.
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.
\_this day in full the books also date it 21 September 1977 \_on this day
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Robert Fisk, who reported from the area, saw Israeli tanks on Lebanese soil near Ibl al-Saqi and Israeli shelling of Christian villages such as Rachaya al-Fukhar, where Palestinian guerrillas had dug in.
They remained there until the end of the year. Christian militias supported by Israel in the South stopped their advance.
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Hanf writes that Major Haddad's forces fired at Kaukaba on the units sent south in early August, men of the 'vanguard' Syria trusted, and drove them into retreat. Haddad later rebelled openly against the army command, and Israel took over paying his men.
\_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.
The explosion slightly injured his head and killed one person and wounded about 10.
\_this day in full the books also date it 25 August 1978 \_on this day
\_this day in full the books also date it 5 March 1980 \_on this day
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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.
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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.
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In Ménargues's account Damascus rejected Takieddine Solh, finding him too lukewarm about Lebanese–Syrian friendship, and offered three names instead, Selim Hoss's among them.
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De Clerck and Malsagne date Lebanese Forces control of East Beirut to this day; Ménargues dates the final takeover of Ain el-Remmaneh to late November. See the note on 27 October.
50 cars were totally stuck between Sofar and Mdeirej and their occupants spent the night in their vehicles. The Army was able to rescue 200 persons in the mountain.
\_this day in full the books also date it 6 April 1981 \_on this day
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Ménargues dates a day of intensive shelling of Zahleh, with about twenty dead, to 6 April.
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Ménargues lists the participants as Syrian foreign minister Abdel Halim Khaddam, the Arab League's representative and the Saudi and Kuwaiti ambassadors, Ali Chaër and Abdel Hamid Bouayajane. That day a general strike against the Syrian presence shut down the Christian regions.
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The 59-year-old ambassador was shot in his locked car at about 1.55 p.m., some 60 metres from a Syrian checkpoint (Malsagne), while heading home near the Résidence des Pins. Malsagne blames a pro-Syrian Shiite commando; the next ambassador, Paul-Marc Henry, saw a botched kidnapping ordered by Iranian intelligence. France was then moving closer to the PLO.
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