Word: highway
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Their orders were to kill until they themselves were killed. And thus last week a Palestinian suicide mission left a grisly trail of carnage along Israel's main coastal highway from Haifa to Tel Aviv. Slipping ashore from the Mediterranean on the afternoon of the Sabbath, the terrorists hijacked two buses filled with tourists and sightseers, took them on a wild ride down the road toward Tel Aviv, shooting along the way at everyone in sight, and finally destroyed one bus in an orgy of fire and death. Official statistics put the dead...
...commandos were carefully chosen and highly trained for their suicidal mission. The plan called for them to seize a bus and use it as a shooting platform to aim at anybody, civilian or military, who happened to come along the highway. Their only purpose was to kill as many Israelis as possible. If they could carry it off, they were to take the bus into the very center of Tel Aviv and continue the carnage until they were wiped...
...ship offshore, from which they put out in two Zodiak commando boats, loaded down with Kalashnikov rifles, RPG light montars and high explosives. In late afternoon they beached near a kibbutz called Ma'agan Mikha'el, then walked less than a mile up to the four-lane highway. After opening fire at passing traffic, they hijacked a white Mercedes taxi, killing its occupants. Setting off down the highway toward Tel Aviv, they met a bus on its way to Haifa. They fired at the bus, wounding its driver and some passengers and forcing it to a stop...
...passing cars from the hijacked bus. Some passengers inside the bus were fired on, and at least one body was dumped along the way. An American youth who was driving from Tel Aviv to Haifa with his family reported seeing "a car standing on the other side of the highway and a body lying near by. Moments later," he said, "I saw a bus zigzagging toward our side of the highway. When we came close it stopped. Somebody came down from the front door of the bus with a submachine gun and shot at us. All the windows were smashed...
Farther down the highway, the commandeered bus met another bus, also heading toward Haifa. The terrorists stopped this bus too, and forced its passengers to crowd onto the first one. The hostages now numbered 71, and the police were on the trail. The bus approached one hastily erected checkpoint and careened right through it. Then, just outside Tel Aviv, police set up a roadblock, seeded the highway with nails, and positioned themselves alongside. There the wild trail of terror finally came to an end. By that time, reported TIME Correspondent David Halevy, who was the only reporter on the scene...