4 Die in Suicide Attack Against Israelis : Teen-Age Girl Driver Identified as Bomber in South Lebanon

A young guerrilla driving a car filled with explosives blew it up in a suicide attack Tuesday against a group of Israeli guards in Lebanon, killing three and wounding two others, an Israeli military source confirmed.

Besides the driver, identified by a guerrilla group as a 16-year-old girl, the blast killed two Israeli soldiers and a Druze member of the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army. The wounded were Israeli soldiers, the source said.

Elsewhere in Lebanon Tuesday, Israeli jets bombed a suspected Palestinian guerrilla base near Beirut, leaving at least three dead, while Israeli troops raided the port city of Tyre in search of Shia Muslim guerrillas. About 60 suspects were rounded up in Tyre.

In Beirut, the Lebanese National Resistance Front, a predominantly Shia Muslim guerrilla group that has vowed to drive Israel’s occupation force out of Lebanon, issued an ambiguous statement on the suicide attack.

The statement said, “There were several casualties among the Israelis, estimated at 50, in addition to the destruction of several vehicles.” It was unclear whether the group meant there were 50 Israelis at the scene or that 50 were killed or wounded.

A spokesman for the group identified the driver as Sana Mohaydaleh. In an interview taped before the incident and shown Tuesday after the attack on Beirut television, a girl identified as Mohaydaleh said:

“I hope that my soul will unite with the souls of all the martyrs before me. I decided on martyrdom to free our land because I saw the misery of my countrymen under the occupation. I hope I will be successful and able to kill the highest number possible of our enemies.”

The incident took place at the main crossing point from central to southern Lebanon. There have been several suicide attacks on Israeli troops in Lebanon, including one a month ago in which 12 soldiers were killed and 14 wounded. This attack took place a few hundred yards north of the border between the two countries.

Tuesday’s incident was believed to be unprecedented in that no other person is thought to have been interviewed for television in advance of a suicide attack.

According to the National Resistance Front’s statement, the girl drove a Peugeot 504 packed with 440 pounds of TNT. The Israeli military source said she slipped through the crossing gate directly behind an Israeli convoy. He said the gate was open for “a matter of seconds.” He located the scene as just north of Jezzine, at the Bater crossing.

According to the Israeli account, a guard at the south side of the crossing ordered the driver to stop and get out of the car, but she sped into a group of guards and touched off the explosives.

The village of Bater is the site of the only open road crossing between the occupied south and the rest of Lebanon. Strict security procedures are normally enforced there. No passenger cars are permitted through, and goods must be transferred from one truck to another before they can be moved on in either direction.

In the air attack, Israel military sources said their jets hit a base near the village of Shamlan, eight miles southeast of Beirut, belonging to the Popular Struggle Front, a pro-Syrian guerrilla faction. The planes destroyed a two-story building used by the front.

The Popular Struggle Front said in Damascus that three guerrillas were killed in the raid, conducted by two jets while other planes provided cover. It said six were wounded. The Druze Voice of the Mountain radio said four Palestinians were killed and nine people were wounded.

Prime Minister Shimon Peres told Israel radio that the air raid was a preventive strike “to prevent a terrorist unit from acting in the future.”

It was Israel’s closest air strike to Beirut since the 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

The raid on Tyre, 50 miles south of Beirut, involved an armored column of 40 personnel carriers and 12 jeeps led by four tanks, witnesses said.

They said the Israeli troops searched houses for weapons and explosives. Male residents were herded onto the beach where they were interrogated by the Israelis. About 60 of the men were placed aboard a truck and driven away.