Israel Jets Hit Guerrilla Bases in North Lebanon

Israeli planes attacked Palestinian targets in this northern Lebanese port Wednesday, demolishing a guerrilla headquarters, setting an oil pipeline ablaze and killing at least 15 people. At least 29 were wounded, hospitals reported.

Jets and helicopter gunships struck three bases of militant Palestinian groups in the Nahr el Bared and Baddawi camps outside Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-largest city, 50 miles north of Beirut.

Although the Israeli military command did not say so, Israeli analysts said the raids were in retaliation for two car-bombing attacks Tuesday in Israel’s southern Lebanon security zone, as well as a series of recent bombings in Israel. On pre-recorded videotapes, members of a little-known group called the Syrian National Social Party took responsibility for the attacks.

Smoke Covers Camps

Tripoli police and hospitals said the dead, most of them civilians, included six children. Clouds of smoke and dust engulfed the Tripoli camps, home to more than 25,000 Palestinians--guerrilla fighters, members of their families and other civilians--for several hours after the attack.

Thick black smoke and flames rose from the pipeline, which passes near the guerrilla headquarters at the southern entrance to the camp. Guerrillas sifted through the rubble, searching for documents and files.

Israeli rockets demolished the headquarters of a Syrian-backed Palestinian faction led by Col. Said Moussa, known by his code name Abu Moussa, in the Nahr el Bared camp six miles north of Tripoli.

The jets attacked another base of the Abu Moussa faction in the same camp and a position manned by the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command in the Baddawi camp, three miles to the south.

Abu Moussa’s guerrillas control Nahr el Bared, and the Popular Front is in charge at Baddawi.

Enemies of Arafat

The two radical guerrilla groups, supported by Syrian troops and armor, drove Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat and about 5,000 of his loyalists from Tripoli in December, 1983.

On Wednesday, journalists near the attack sites reported ground fire as the Israeli jets swept in, dropping scarlet balloons to divert heat-seeking missiles. Several surface-to-air missiles were fired, but no hits were seen and the Israeli command said all its aircraft returned safely.

It was the seventh Israeli air strike in Lebanon this year and the first since April 17, when Israeli aircraft hit a Palestinian base near Bar Elias in the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon.

The raids were the first reported since last year in the Tripoli area, which has been torn by fighting between rival Muslim militias in recent days.

Israel said the two car-bombings Tuesday, at checkpoints in the security zone north of its border, killed 13 civilians and two militiamen of the South Lebanon Army militia that it sponsors, in addition to the suicide drivers. Two Israeli soldiers and four other people were wounded. Earlier reports gave the toll as 19 dead and eight wounded.

The Israelis have vowed quick retaliation for attacks on the soldiers it sends into the security zone.

Attacks on Israelis

Recent attacks inside Israel include bombings of bus stops in two Tel Aviv suburbs, a bomb explosion on a Tel Aviv beach, two explosions in Jerusalem, the stabbing of a religious Jew in Jerusalem’s Arab quarter and the killing of a couple in Bet Shemesh for which a Palestinian was arrested.

Shortly after the raid on the camps, fighting resumed between the Tripoli antagonists--the pro-Syrian Arab Democratic Party and Tawhid, the Muslim fundamentalist movement backed by the PLO. Two people were killed and and five wounded in overnight clashes--raising the casualties since Monday to 27 dead and 68 wounded by police count.

In Beirut, militiamen exchanged gunfire across the Green Line that divides the city’s Christian and Muslim sectors. Police said two civilians were killed and eight wounded.

The new Beirut hostilities began the day after a Syrian-sponsored conference of Lebanon’s main Sunni Muslim, Shia Muslim and Druze leaders reached a 16-point agreement aimed at ending Lebanon’s long civil strife.