Word: larnaca
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...Israel. But what infuriated Egyptians even more was that a commando expedition dispatched to capture Sebai's killers and free their eleven Arab hostages ended in disaster. Last week the commandos were ambushed by Cypriot national guardsmen. Fifteen of the 58 Egyptians who had flown into Cyprus' Larnaca airport aboard a C-130E military transport died in a swirling 50-minute airport gun battle. Their $6 million plane went up in flames...
...assassins rounded up 16 Arab convention delegates as hostages-among them, ironically, two P.L.O. representatives. At Larnaca airport, they commandeered a Cyprus Airways DC-8 jet and set out on a fruitless journey to Djibouti and back (see following story...
That assurance was scarcely comforting to Sadat, who knew that Cyprus had long been a haven for Palestinian terrorists. Fearing that the killers might be freed, Sadat alerted the Egyptian army's crack Saiqa (Lightning) commando team and ordered it sent to Larnaca. Cairo merely informed Kyprianou that "we have people on the way to help rescue the hostages." Clearly, Sadat was preparing for an Entebbe-like raid. When the Egyptian transport arrived, Cypriot officials were stunned to discover that the "helpers" were Commando General Nabil Shukry and his assault team. Most were wearing combat suits. For some unexplained...
Hailing its commandos home last week, Egypt treated the Larnaca raid as a famous victory, and in a sense it was. Sadat was praised for forcefulness not only by President Carter but even by the Israelis. But the Cyprus events, beginning with Sebai's assassination, were a grievous blow to Arab unity, especially for rejectionists like Arafat, who oppose Sadat's negotiations but would really like to close the gap between their position and his. Up to now Sadat has based his conversations with Israel not only on the recovery of Sinai but on Palestinian rights as well...
...backed by his Cabinet and by opposition leaders, alerted Grenzschutzgruppe 9 (G.S.G. 9), the elite commando unit of West Germany's Border Protection Force. Thirty members of the unit left immediately for Cyprus aboard a Lufthansa 707, Flight 1231. But Flight 1231, in a near miss, arrived at Larnaca just as Flight 181 was taking off. Flight 1231 flew to Ankara to await further instructions, while the hijacked plane flew on to Bahrain and Dubai...