Israelis, Allies Kill 6 Arabs in South Lebanon

Israeli forces and their allies killed six Arab guerrillas in south Lebanon on Thursday during a battle in the foothills of Mt. Hermon, police said.

A police spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Israeli troops and their militia allies of the South Lebanon Army killed the six guerrillas after the Arabs attacked a hilltop position manned by the SLA and Israeli soldiers.

The fighting occurred in an area west of Hasbayya, a town in Israel’s self-proclaimed “security zone,” he said.

In Jerusalem, the Israeli army confirmed that six guerrillas were killed in the gun battle in south Lebanon. It said Israeli forces suffered no casualties.

The battle came two days after Israeli and SLA militiamen wounded two Shia Muslim fighters of the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah (Party of God) in a confrontation north of the security zone, which Israel created for itself after withdrawing most of its troops from Lebanon in 1985.

Meanwhile, the families of two kidnaped French diplomats pleaded for their release after 1,000 days of captivity in Lebanon, a Beirut newspaper reported.

Appeal Published

The Beirut independent daily paper An Nahar said the families of Marcel Fontaine and Marcel Carton delivered their appeal to the Hezbollah office in Paris on Wednesday. It was published Thursday.

“We address an urgent humanitarian call to all the concerned states and Muslim religious authorities that have helped us in the past to continue their efforts . . . to put an urgent and final end to this tragedy,” the families said.

Fontaine, 45, a vice consul, and Carton, 64, the embassy’s protocol chief, were kidnaped March 22, 1985, while on their way to work at the French Embassy in Muslim West Beirut.