The World - News from Feb. 24, 1989

Israeli-backed militiamen patrolling southern Lebanon shot and killed three guerrillas from a radical PLO faction who were on their way to attack a target in Israel, an Israeli army spokesman said. The Marxist guerrilla group said in a statement that the three fighters killed three Israeli soldiers and two Christian militiamen before they were gunned down, but the army spokesman said no militiamen from the South Lebanon Army were injured in the clash. The three were reportedly killed about a mile north of the Israeli border. Documents on the bodies of the heavily armed guerrillas showed they were members of Nayef Hawatmeh’s Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization.