Troops Never Fired On in 3 1/2-Year Sinai Duty

The 250 U.S. soldiers killed in Thursday’s crash were part of the world’s youngest peacekeeping force and also the least visible, thanks to strict Egyptian and Israeli observance of the peace treaty the troops were helping to enforce.

The 250 from the 101st Airborne Division had just completed a six-month tour of duty in the Sinai desert with the 11-nation Multinational Force and Observers (MFO), a 2,600-member group set up to monitor compliance with the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.

In the 3 1/2 years since it was sent to the Sinai, the force has never been fired upon. Its monitoring mission has been so uneventful that it is often referred to as the “forgotten peacekeeping force.”

A handful of fatalities have been reported, but these have resulted from “accidents, mostly involving cars,” said Maj. Ronald Carpenter Jr., the force’s liaison officer.

Slaying in Rome

(The unit has a civilian director general, based in Rome. One of these, Leamon (Ray) Hunt, a retired U.S. diplomat, was shot and killed by two gunmen, apparently leftist terrorists, in Rome on Feb. 15, 1984, as he returned home in an armor-plated car.)

Although the force was established under a protocol attached to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, it was first deployed in the Sinai after Israel completed its withdrawal from the peninsula in April, 1982.

Israel had captured the Sinai from Egypt in the 1967 Six-Day War and lost some of the territory at the outset of the 1973 Middle East War, when Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal in a surprise attack.

Originally, the United Nations was asked to provide the peacekeeping force, but the Soviet Union threatened to veto a proposal before the Security Council to create a force similar to U.N. units in Cyprus and southern Lebanon. So the United States, after protracted negotiations, secured the participation of 10 other countries--Australia, Colombia, Fiji, France, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Britain, Uruguay and Norway.

Half Are Americans

American personnel still make up nearly half of the force, with an infantry battalion of 750 men, a 350-man logistics support group and an observer unit composed of 25 civilians. The current force commander is Lt. Gen. Egil J. Ingebrigtsen of Norway.

U.S. forces are ranged along the mountainous eastern edge of the Sinai, where a two-lane road runs along the Gulf of Aqaba. Both the U.S. and Italian contingents maintain their headquarters at Sharm el Sheik, where Israel had built an army and navy base and maintained early-warning radars pointed south toward the Red Sea.

The U.S. contingent rotates twice a year in three groups. The victims of Thursday’s plane crash were the second group to depart this month. Another group left for a home a week ago.

A final group of Americans is scheduled to return to the United States next Wednesday, after their replacements arrive. The new troops will be from the 9th Infantry Division, based at Ft. Lewis, Wash.

Because living conditions in the Sinai are Spartan and the tour of duty is brief, dependents are not allowed to accompany the soldiers, and many of the victims had wives and children waiting for them back home.