Mideast situation/Lebanon – Letter from Israel

Letter dated 1 April  1986 from the Permanent Representative of Israel

to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General

On the morning of 27 March 1986 several 122 mm Katyusha rockets were fired at the town of Kiryat Shemona from Lebanese territory. One of the rockets hit a crowded elementary school wounding six, among them a teacher and four children.

This shelling is the latest in a series of attacks aimed at the civilian population of northern Israel. Significantly, in an official broadcast from Baghdad, the Fatah faction of the PLO claimed responsibility for the attack. Once again, by its own admission, the PLO exposes its unabashed pursuit of terror deliberately targeting not soldiers, but children.

The rockets were fired from a site near the village of Shakra, in an area over which UNIFIL assumed control in July 1985. As this incident and other recent terrorist attacks launched from the same area demonstrate, preventing PLO and Hezbollah terrorism requires forces explicitly committed to and organized for the defence of the area against terrorism.

I have the honour to request that this letter be circulated as an official document of the General Assembly, under item 37 of the preliminary list, and of the Security Council.

(Signed)  Benjamin NETANYAHU

Ambassador

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*A/41/50/Rev.l.