Word: libyans
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...midst of a sandstorm that grounded all other commercial flights, a Libyan Airlines 727 bound for Cairo blundered into airspace above the Israeli-occupied Sinai Desert, which had been declared an official war zone. Israeli officials, worried by reports that Arab terrorists planned to use a civilian airliner in a kamikaze attack on an Israeli city, ordered up Phantom F-4E interceptors. When the French pilot of the jet seemed to ignore warning shots signaling him to land at a nearby military base, the Israeli pilots shot the Boeing down, killing 108 of the 116 passengers aboard. Tapes of cockpit...
...military airbase. Parked next to the jets on the runway apron were half a dozen Transall military freighters and a C-135F aerial refueling plane, together with five fighter aircraft from Zaire. "Operation Manta," as the government of President Francis Mitterrand had code-named France's challenge to Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi's ambitions in Chad, was beginning to acquire some sting...
...Monde that French troops were in Chad only as "instructors" who would provide "logistical support" and exercise a "dissuasive role." Mitterrand added that if threatened, French troops would "respond and, to defend themselves better, not limit their reply to a defensive one." Implicit was a warning that a Libyan push south from the oasis of Faya-Largeau, which was captured by a joint Libyan and rebel force in early August, would produce a military showdown with France...
...French buildup was applauded by the government of Chadian President Hissene Habre, who had been imploring France to intervene directly. But there seemed little likelihood of imminent conflict between the French and Libyan forces. With some 300 miles of desert separating the Libyans at Faya-Largeau from the French forces at the forward redoubts of Sallal and Arada, it would be a bold venture for either side to make a military move. The Libyans are known to have ground-to-air missiles at Faya-Largeau. The French have conventional antiaircraft missiles, while Chadian troops in the forward positions have been...
...arrival of French airpower in N'Djamena, the U.S. announced that it was withdrawing the two AW ACS surveillance planes that it had sent to the area a month ago in the hope that Mitterrand would intervene directly. The Administration feared that if Chad fell to Gaddafi, the Libyan leader would be in a position to threaten such U.S. allies as Egypt and, especially, the Sudan. The AW ACS planes never took part in the Chadian war, but they became an unfortunate symbol of the differences between Paris and Washington over how to deal with the crisis...