Car Bomber Kills 7 Israeli Troops at Lebanon Border

A suicide car bomb exploded Wednesday in southern Lebanon near the border with Israel, killing seven Israeli soldiers and wounding eight others along with two Lebanese women. It was the worst strike at Israeli troops in Lebanon in more than three years.

At 1:35 p.m., a white Toyota auto driven by an unidentified person pulled up beside an Israeli convoy of five jeeps and a van. The bomb went off as the convoy was about to cross the frontier into the Israeli town of Metulla.

All the Israeli vehicles were engulfed in flames and the occupants were sprayed with shrapnel, an Israeli military spokesman said.

The explosion left a crater 4 yards across. No trace of the driver was found.

The wounded, three of whom are listed in critical condition, were evacuated by army helicopter to Rambam Hospital in the coastal city of Haifa. The fate of the Lebanese women was not made known.

Israeli military sources and radio reports from Lebanon attributed the attack to the Islamic Resistance, a group of pro-Iranian Muslim militants. According to Israeli government television, the attack was timed to commemorate the birthday on Oct. 22 of the Prophet Mohammed and was put forth by the group as “a gift to the (Palestinian) uprising” against Israel in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In the past, such action has almost always been followed by retaliation against Palestinian or radical Muslim settlements in Lebanon. Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who went to the site of the blast, hinted at a coming attack.

‘No One Will Go Clean’

“Our hand will reach every murderer everywhere,” Rabin warned. “No one will go clean. Whoever sends suicide assassins must know he will pay the bill in full.”

In March, 1985, a suicide car bomber rammed an Israeli troop truck and killed 12 soldiers.

It was not immediately clear how the driver of the car involved in Wednesday’s incident avoided detection by Israeli forces in southern Lebanon. Israel maintains a security zone in the area that is manned by an estimated 1,000 Israeli soldiers and 2,000 members of an allied, mostly Christian Lebanese militia.

Besides army traffic, the border crossing is used by Lebanese civilians who work in Israel.

Maj. Gen. Dan Shomron, Israel’s military chief of staff, said: “They had tried such attacks in the past and failed. Now they have succeeded. We will try to improve. This is very bad.”

In all, 43 Israeli soldiers have been killed in clashes with Palestinians and Muslim guerrillas in Lebanon since June, 1985. In that month, Israel withdrew most of its troops from Lebanon after three years of occupation.

Since the pullout, Israel has maintained the security zone, which is 6 to 10 miles deep and extends along the length of the border, in order to head off guerrilla attacks into northern Israel.

Car-bomb assaults are common in the zone. In August, a suicide bomber tried to drive a car packed with explosives into an Israeli jeep, but the explosives blew up before he could reach his target. Three Israeli soldiers were injured.