8 Die in Israeli Raid on Lebanon Guerrilla Bases

Israeli warplanes struck at Palestinian and Lebanese guerrilla bases east of this port city Tuesday and early today in what was described as some of heaviest bombing in years.

In the Tuesday raid, at least eight people were reported killed and 38 wounded, including 12 schoolchildren, whose classroom windows shattered when a bomb fell close to their school.

There was no immediate word on casualties from today’s raid.

The raids were the second and third in 48 hours. On Monday, Israeli warplanes launched the first of this series of attacks on guerrilla bases in southern Lebanon, leaving four people dead and 11 wounded, according to Lebanese police.

Tuesday’s raid, which came two days before the anniversary of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, was described by police and residents as the largest this year and one of the largest since the invasion, which smashed the Palestine Liberation Organization’s hegemony over southern Lebanon.

During a two-hour period, witnesses said, the planes made more than a dozen passes over training bases, ammunition depots, artillery and antiaircraft guns in several sites east of Sidon.

The targeted bases belong to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, two PLO affiliates; the Revolutionary Council of Fatah, which operates outside the PLO and is led by the terrorist Abu Nidal, and the Popular Liberation Army, a Lebanese Sunni Muslim militia.

After Israel withdrew from Sidon to a self-proclaimed security zone north of the Israeli border in 1985, the power vacuum led to battles between rival Muslim and Christian militias, emptying villages in the hills above Sidon. As Palestinian fighters returned and Lebanese Shiite Muslims formed anti-Israeli resistance cells, the deserted villages became their headquarters.

Israel has stepped up anti-guerrilla activity recently in what is thought to be reaction to the Lebanese-Syrian cooperation treaty signed May 22. Israel has accused Syria of “swallowing Lebanon” and its sovereignty and thereby threatening the security of the Jewish state.

Israeli army spokesmen said Tuesday’s targets were staging areas used for concentrating armored vehicles, artillery and ammunition.

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine reacted to Tuesday’s raid by threatening “to strike in depth against the Israeli army and its agents.”

The force of one bomb Tuesday shattered windows in the Notre Dame school in the village of Aabra, with an enrollment of 1,300.

The nuns rushed 12 children to a hospital in Sidon, where doctors stitched head wounds in many of the 4- to 6-year-olds. Frantic parents had to wait for the two-hour air attack to end before they dared approach the school.

Jihad Dada of the nearby village of Majdel Youn was glad that his three sons were not at home when an Israeli bomb exploded next to his apartment building, ripping apart the walls and contents of the bedrooms and leaving a 30-foot-wide, 6-foot-deep crater in the garden.

Since there are no guerrilla bases in the area, he said, the bomb must have been “a mistake.”