Deadly bus shooting echoed across slaughter of civil war

On this day in 1975, 27 bus passengers were gunned down, sparking the start of a civil war that would wrack Lebanon for 15 years.

13/04/2009 WIRE: Lebanese light candles during a vigil marking the 34th anniversary of the 1975-90 civil war and to honor the victims of that war, at the Martyrs square in downtown of Beirut, Lebanon, on Monday April 13, 2009. When the Lebanese civil war ended in 1990, the toll was colossal: 150,000 people killed, about half a million wounded and nearly a similar number displaced. One quarter of the population, or about 900,000 people, had left the tiny Arab country. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

For a brief time, the Dodge bus that carried the 27 passengers gunned down in April, 1975, precipitating 150,000 deaths in a 15-year Lebanese civil war, returned to eastern Beirut.

The former French colony, wedged north of Israel and bordered by Syria, erupted into bloodshed on April 13, 1975, when Christian militiamen machinegunned the bus loaded with Palestinians. The attack at Ain el-Remmaneh, in Beirut’s eastern suburbs, came hours after the killing of four Christian militia outside a nearby church.

Returning the bus to central Beirut as a memorial in 2007, civil war survivor Sami Hamdan explained: “This is the outcome of civil wars. People get killed, everyone loses and everything gets destroyed. All that’s left will be a rusty carcass.”

The wrecked bus, empty except for a mangled back seat, was parked in the centre of Beirut racetrack, once on the Green Line that separated Beirut’s Christian eastern sector from its Muslim west.

The racetrack is adjacent to Beirut National Museum, the main crossing point in the once-divided capital, where militias ruled.

Hamdan had bought the bus 25 years earlier from its original owner, Abu Rida, who was driving on the day of the attack.

Rida was slightly wounded during the attack but his life was saved when he ducked down and hid under the bodies of the victims. He repaired the vehicle and drove it for a short time.

Early on the morning of April 13, 1975, about six armed Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) guerillas drove past the Maronite Christian Church of Notre Dame de la Delivrance, waving and firing automatic rifles into the air.

A squad of uniformed militiamen from the Christian Phalangist Party’s Kataeb Regulatory Forces (KRF) was diverting traffic at the front of the newly consecrated Maronite temple, where a baptism was taking place. When the Palestinians refused to be diverted from their route, Phalangists tried to stop them by force. One of the PLO drivers was fatally shot.

Maronites, named for either fourth century Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch Saint Marc Maron, or seventh century saint John Maron, had fled persecution by other Christians in Syria in the sixth century to settle in Lebanon.

Displaced Palestinians flooded into southern Lebanon after the first Arab-Israeli War in 1948, settling at Tall al-Za’tar Palestinian Camp in north-eastern Beirut. The settlement swelled to more than 30,000 as up to 700,000 Palestinian refugees arrived after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, leading to political tension in Lebanon in the early 1970s.

The Maronite congregation was gathered outside their new church at 10.30am on the same day when a group of unidentified gunmen approached two civilian cars displaying bumper stickers from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a PLO faction.

The gunmen opened fire, killing four Phalangist militants, Joseph Abu Assi, father of the baptised child and his three bodyguards, Antoine Husseini, Dib Assaf and Selman Ibrahim Abou.

All belonged to the personal entourage of Maronite Christian pharmacist and politician Pierre Gemayel, founder and leader of the right-wing Phalangist Party, who was slightly wounded.

The attackers fled under fire from the surviving bodyguards and KRF militia, who set up roadblocks at Ain el-Remmaneh and other Christian-populated eastern Beirut suburbs to stop vehicles and check identities.

Palestinian militia set up their own roadblocks in the mainly Muslim western sectors of Beirut.

Phalangist KRP militia, assuming Palestinian guerillas had carried out the church killings in an attempt to kill Gemayel, planned an immediate response.

Just after noon a PLO bus carrying Palestinian refugees was returning to Sabra refugee camp from a political rally at Tall al-Za’tar held by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

As it passed through narrow streets in Ain el-Remmaneh, Phalangist militants opened fire on the bus, killing 27 passengers and wounding 19. Reports vary as to whether any passengers were armed. With the Lebanese government unable to restore order, retaliatory attacks including a 1976 massacre by Christian militia at Tall al-Za’tar camp, led to civil war.

Apart from the loss of about 150,000 lives, up to 900,000 Lebanese fled, with more than 20,000 migrating to Australia.

Originally published as Deadly bus shooting echoed across slaughter of civil war