
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 30, 1990                   TAG: 9005300492
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/5   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NIZZANIM, ISRAEL                                LENGTH: Short

PALESTINIAN GUERRILLAS ATTACK ISRAELI BEACH

Palestinian guerrillas in speedboats today launched an assault on Mediterranean beaches crowded with thousands of Israelis, but soldiers killed four raiders and captured several others, the military said.

No Israelis were reported killed or injured. However, most of them were forced off beaches south of Tel Aviv, where they had come on the Shavuot holiday or Festival of Weeks, which marks the giving of the Ten Commandments.

The raid was the largest Palestinian infiltration attempt by sea since March 11, 1978, when a dozen guerrillas from PLO chief Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction came ashore and hijacked a bus on the coastal highway north of Tel Aviv. Thirty-three people were killed and 82 wounded in the incident.

Israel armed-forces radio, reporting on today's raid, said the mother ship came from Libya and the guerrillas had planned to kill civilians in Tel Aviv.

Police ordered thousands of other residents near the beach to stay home. Soldiers and rifle-toting farmers manned roadblocks from the southern edge of Tel Aviv down the coast to Ashkelon.

An army spokesman said the attackers were Palestinians but did not identify the faction to which they belonged.

by CNB