Middle East: New Bloodshed, New Hope

Just as the chances of Lebanese reconciliation improve, violence hits again

The similarities were eerie. As dawn was breaking over southern Lebanon last Friday morning, a suicidal terrorist driving a bomb-laden Chevrolet pickup crashed through the barricade at the Israeli military headquarters in the Lebanese port city of Tyre. Practically in the middle of the compound, nearly half a ton of explosives detonated, killing 28 Israeli soldiers and military personnel and 32 Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners who were being held in one of the buildings. Forty-one other people were wounded. For the Israelis, who had bolstered their security following the deaths of some 230 U.S. Marines and other servicemen and 58 French peace-keeping troops in virtually identical terrorist raids less than two weeks earlier, it was one of the worst losses in a single day since they invaded Lebanon in June 1982.

At the demolished military headquarters, Israeli officials lamented the fact that a recently installed barricade of barrels and concrete "tiger's teeth" had failed to block the terrorist's truck. His success demonstrated, as if further proof were needed, how difficult it is to make any installation secure from a suicide attack (see box). The truck was said to have passed three unmanned Israeli roadblocks on the coastal highway that runs through Tyre, a Mediterranean port 50 miles south of Beirut. Sentries at two posts opened fire as the truck turned into the compound. David Illouz, one of the Israeli guards, said that he "fired without letup" at the pickup truck and was certain that he had hit the driver. But the truck ripped the gate from its hinges and rolled into the middle of the compound, where it exploded. Nonetheless, Israeli commanders said that Illouz had, by shooting the terrorist, probably prevented the truck from getting closer to the headquarters and causing even more casualties. "By the time I arrived a few minutes later," a brigadier general told TIME Correspondent David Halevy, "the region was covered with a huge cloud of smoke, and the buildings were on fire."

Israeli soldiers immediately began to tear away the debris with their bare hands. "A stretcher! A stretcher!" a soldier shouted. A moment later, a litter with a gray blanket covering a body was carried from the bombed-out area. "We discover a body every five minutes," said a colonel, and so it seemed. Five minutes later, another stretcher carried another body to the parking lot of the compound. Soldiers followed two German shepherds who led them to still another body buried in the ruins. "These dogs have already found seven," explained their trainer. Helicopters whipped up dust as they landed, some bringing in rabbis of the Israeli Defense Forces to help with the painful process of identifying the dead, notifying families and returning the bodies home for burial.