Word: port
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...coastal assault began swiftly as the invading column, including some 100 tanks and an equal number of personnel carriers, closed in on the port of Tyre. At the same time, Israeli landing craft and helicopters surprised the defend ers by placing troops and even tanks as far north as the Zahrani River, 30 miles north of the border. P.L.O. guerrillas held their positions as long as they could and then dispersed. Some stayed in Tyre, while others went to refugee camps or into the hills to do battle as small guerrilla units...
...last, the climactic battle for the Falklands was on. Just ten weeks after Argentina seized the desolate South Atlantic islands, the 9,000 British troops encamped on the hills above Port Stanley launched an all-out assault on the 7,500 Argentines dug in around the capital. The intention was, as an official in London put it, to hit the Argentine garrison "with...
...what British Defense Minister John Nott described as a "brilliant surprise attack," Royal Marine commandos and paratroopers overran Argentine positions just before daybreak, coming to within five miles of Port Stanley. Many of the young Argentine defenders were asleep in their foxholes as the British struck. The first things they saw, said Nott, "were the blackened faces of the British troops in the trenches with them...
...attack, while Harrier jets bombed the garrison in, as the British Defense Ministry put it, a final "softening-up operation." Interrupting the broadcast of a Mass being celebrated by Pope John Paul II (see following story), Argentine, television broadcast a communique that accused the British of "indiscriminately" bombing Port Stanley. It said that two civilian residents of the island capital had been killed and four others wounded...
...after an unnerving pause of more than one week. The delay may have been partly tactical (to allow time to move in additional men and materiel), partly wishful thinking (the hope that Argentina would avert a bloodbath by capitulating), partly humanitarian (to forestall casualties among the civilian residents of Port Stanley). The pause may have served its purpose. British intelligence reportedly overheard an unscrambled conversation last week between Brigadier General Mario Benjamin Menendez, commander of the Argentine troops on the islands, and his superiors on the mainland. Menendez is said to have described the low morale of his troops, adding...