Word: ite
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ground in Beirut, the plane was refueled as the hijackers had ordered. The terrorists also asked to speak to an official of Amal, the mainstream Shi'ite Muslim political and military force, but Amal leaders refused the request. After announcing their demands, the hijackers released 19 women and children via a yellow escape chute lowered from the forward door. One freed hostage, Irma Garza of Laredo, Texas, said that the terrorists had shot one man in the neck. Passengers were unnerved by the behavior of the hijackers. "They were hysterical, they were screaming," said Patricia Weber of Albuquerque...
...operator remonstrated with him, saying, "Isn't it a shame, killing an innocent passenger?" the hijacker replied angrily, "Did you forget the Bir al Abed massacre?" He was referring to the March 8 car bombing in the Bir al Abed suburb of Beirut that killed more than 75 Shi'ite Muslims but failed to hurt Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadallah, one of Lebanon's pro-Iranian Shi'ite religious leaders. Shi'ites later claimed that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had engineered the bombing, in an attempt to fight Shi'ite terrorism with counterterrorism; the CIA denied the charge...
...United Nations and the Red Cross, and the ambassadors of France, Spain and Britain; they later agreed that such a meeting could be held at Berri's residence, where he would act as their representative. The terrorists' repeated emphasis on seeing officials of Amal, the mainstream Shi'ite organization, suggested not only that they were seeking a negotiated settlement but that their motivation may have been essentially political rather than ideological...
...most troubling aspects of the plight of Flight 847 was that it was the third hijacking that occurred in the region within three days last week, and the second apparently engineered by Lebanese Shi'ites. In earlier times, Arab skyjackers tended to be Palestinians, from one or another faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, attempting to advance or at least dramatize the Palestinian cause. The politicization of Lebanon's Shi'ite Muslim community is one of the most significant and most troubling consequences of the Israeli invasion...
...hours, as the plane bounced around the eastern half of the Mediterranean, the skyjackers had ample time to air their complaints. They were angry about an Arab League statement supporting the cause of the Palestinians in the Beirut refugee camps, which have been under attack by Lebanese Shi'ites for the past three weeks. The Shi'ites want to drive out the Palestinians to make sure that the P.L.O. will never again be able to set up a "state within a state" in Lebanon. After several dire threats, the hijackers freed the passengers, blew up the plane and sped...