RAID: Israelis Pound Pro-Syrian Militia Headquarters : Israeli Warplanes Kill Two at Pro-Syrian Militia Base

Israeli warplanes Friday demolished the headquarters of a pro-Syrian militia that has claimed responsibility for seven suicide-car bombings of Israeli targets. The group said several leaders got out before the raid.

The Syrian Social Nationalist Party said two of its militiamen were killed and four wounded. It was the second Israeli air strike at a guerrilla base in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley last week.

Chtoura is 10 miles west of the Syrian border in the Bekaa, where Syria maintains 25,000 troops.

Militia officials said four high-flying F-4 Phantoms came in high at Chtoura and two swooped in on the two-story building while the others flew cover.

They said the raiders dropped the bombs on their second pass at the former hotel, 50 yards from the Beirut-Damascus highway on the outskirts of the town, and it collapsed into a heap of concrete, metal and sandstone rubble.

Under the Debris

Red Cross volunteers pulled the dead and wounded from the debris.

Syrian troops based in Chtoura formed a cordon around the building. Militiamen salvaged boxes of ammunition radios and a black and red militia flag from the remains of their headquarters.

A Syrian military spokesman said in Damascus, “Our defenses in the area confronted them (the planes) and forced them to flee.”

Residents in Chtoura said they heard “some anti-aircraft fire” from Syrian batteries scattered across the valley. The Israeli military command in Tel Aviv said all the planes returned safely.

Officials of the pro-Syrian group said Hafez Sayegh, the militia’s finance chief, and four other leaders left minutes before the raid. They said most of the building had been evacuated in case of retaliation, and that those killed and wounded were guards.

Retaliation Vowed

Habib Kayrouz, the militia’s chief spokesman, vowed in Beirut that his guerrillas will increase their attacks and strike “into the heart of Israel.”

Two days ago the the group claimed its latest suicide bombing in the “security zone” Israel has established in South Lebanon just north of its border.

Witnesses said three Israelis and five Lebanese were killed when a 22-year-old suicide driver rammed a car packed with explosives into an Israeli armored patrol last week as it drove into the village square of Arnoun, five miles from the Israeli border.

The Israelis said two of their soldiers were slightly wounded, and that the driver and another Lebanese were killed in the seventh attack by the pro-Syrian group this year.

Proud of ‘Martyrs’

In a videotape provided to state television for broadcast after the attack--a standard practice of the group--the driver said he was proud to join the “martyrs” who had driven other car bombs.

The pro-Syrian militia advocates a Greater Syria, composed of Syria, Palestine (now Israel), Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait and Cyprus.

Despite its attacks this year on the Israelis and the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army, this was the first retaliatory strike against the Syrian Social Nationalist Party.

Warplanes raided a radical Palestinian guerrilla group last week at Bar Elias, about a mile west of Chtoura, in response to an earlier suicide bombing and other attacks on Israeli targets.

Reporters who visited the base of the Libyan-backed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command afterward saw craters in the ground around it, but the building was intact.

Kayrouz, spokesman for the pro-Syrian militia, said in Beirut: “Our operations will not be limited to Israeli troops in Lebanon. We shall carry them across the border and strike into the heart of Israel. Blood streams will never dry up.”

Police said a car bomb exploded outside the deserted former headquarters of President Amin Gemayel’s Christian Falangist Party in the port of Juniyeh, 12 miles north of Beirut. They said the blast shook the resort town and damaged several buildings, but caused no casualties.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing.