Damur massacre

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Damur massacre occurred on January 20, 1976 and was an event in the Lebanese civil war that lasted from 1975 to 1990. It was perpetrated by mainly Palestinian and Muslim militias and was directed against the Christian residents of Damur .

Course of events

The massacre follows the Karantina massacre of January 18, 1976 by the Phalangists of Palestinian refugees , in which it is estimated that between 1,000 and 1,500 civilians were killed.

Two days later, Palestinian militias retaliated in Damur. Damur is located by the sea about 18 kilometers south of Beirut and near Dair al-Qamar , the hometown of the Camille Chamouns family . Most of the residents managed to escape, but some stayed behind when the Palestinian forces took control of the city. The attackers systematically destroyed the city's buildings and took revenge on the remaining Christian residents.

The Christian cemetery was destroyed, coffins were broken into, the dead robbed, crypts opened and corpses and skeletons scattered across the cemetery. The church was set on fire and an outside wall was covered with a picture of Fatah fighters holding AK-47 rifles. A portrait of Yasser Arafat was attached to one end. Other sources claim that the church served as a repair shop for PLO vehicles and as a target for target practice, with targets being painted on the east wall of the nave .

Twenty phalangists were executed, then civilians were lined up along a wall and shot with machine guns . An unknown number of women have been raped , babies shot at close range, and corpses desecrated and mutilated. None of the remaining residents survived. The number of civilians killed ranges from 25-30 to 582, with the most likely estimate being around 330. Members of the Elie Hobeikas family and his fiancée were among those killed .

In August, Christian militias, in revenge, carried out the massacre of Tel al-Zaatar , a Palestinian refugee camp that killed between 1,000 and 3,000 people. Later that year, the PLO resettled surviving Palestinian refugees from the Tel al-Zaatar massacre in Damur. After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, these refugees were driven back from Damur and its original inhabitants were brought back.

According to Thomas L. Friedman , the phalangist Damuri brigade involved in the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre took revenge there in particular for the killing of their relatives in Damur.

Perpetrator

There are a number of conflicting reports about which militias actually took part in the massacre. In any case, the attack and the following massacre was carried out by a mixed group of PLO and militiamen from the Lebanese National Movement (LNM).

According to Robert Fisk , the attack was commanded by Colonel Abu Musa , a commander-in-chief of the PLO and Fatah , who later led the Fatah uprising against Arafat . According to a Christian Lebanese website, however, Zuheir Mohsen , the leader of the Syrian- based Palestinian group as-Sa'iqa , commanded the attackers and has since been known in Lebanon as the "butcher of Damur". The bulk of the attacking forces appear to have been made up of brigades from the Palestinian Liberation Army and as-Sa'iqa. There are also some other militias, including Fatah, some sources also mention the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and the Muslim Lebanese Murabitun militia . There are reports that volunteers or militiamen from Syria, Jordan , Libya , Iran , Pakistan and Afghanistan , as well as Japanese commandos training in Lebanon, participated in the attack.

literature

  • Antoine J. Abraham: The Lebanon War . Praeger, Westport, Conn. 1996, ISBN 0275953890
  • Robert Fisk: Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2001, ISBN 0192801309
  • Thomas Friedman: From Beirut To Jerusalem . 2nd edition. HarperCollins, London 1998, ISBN 0006530702
  • Mordekay Nisan: The Conscience of Lebanon. A Political Biography of Etienne Sakr (Abu-Arz) . Frank Cass, London 2003, ISBN 0714653926

Complementary

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kissinger, Henry (1999) Years of Renewal Simon Schuster, ISBN 1-84212-042-5 , p. 1022
  2. ^ Noam Chomsky (1989) Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies South End Press , ISBN 0-89608-366-7 , p. 171
  3. ^ William Harris: Faces of Lebanon. Sects, Wars, and Global Extensions. Markus Wiener Publishers, Princeton, USA 1996, p. 162
  4. ↑ Lebanese war chronology - 1976 ( Memento from April 21, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Fisk, 2001, pp. 99-100
  6. ↑ Abraham, 1996, p. 33
  7. ↑ Nisan, 2003, p. 25
  8. ^ Elie Hobeika ( Memento from August 3, 2008 in the Internet Archive ). On: moreorless.au.com on June 11, 2011
  9. ↑ Helena Cobban: Back to Shatila, part 2 ( Memento from January 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). On: justworldnews.org on November 8, 2004
  10. ^ Friedman, 1998, p. 161.
  11. ↑ Friedman, New York Times , articles on September 20, 21, 26, and 27, 1982.
  12. ^ The Massacre and Destruction of Damour ( Memento June 2, 2007 in the Internet Archive ). On: cedarland.org
  13. ↑ Some sources name the Ayn Jalout Brigade belonging to the Palestinian Liberation Army, which was armed by Egypt , and the Qadisiyah Brigade , which was equipped by Iraq . "Syria's Horrendous Track Record in Lebanon" by the USCFL Research Group ( Memento from December 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) also names the Yarmouk Brigade set up by Syria .
  14. ↑ Nisan, 2003, p. 41