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Achille Lauro Hijacking
The ''Achille Lauro'' hijacking took place on 7 October 1985, when the Italian ocean liner MS ''Achille Lauro'' was hijacked by four men representing the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) off the coast of Egypt, as she was sailing from Alexandria to Ashdod, Israel. A 69-year-old Jewish American man in a wheelchair, Leon Klinghoffer, was murdered by the hijackers and thrown overboard. The hijacking sparked the "Sigonella Crisis". Background Palestine Liberation Organization After the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was driven by Israel out of Jordan in 1970 and Southern Lebanon and Beirut in 1978 and 1982, respectively, PLO guerrillas had dispersed (under international guarantees of safety) to Tunisia, Yemen, Southern Yemen, Algeria, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and the Sudan. Meanwhile, in Lebanon, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat had run into problems with Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, who in 1983 sought to wrest effective control of the group from him by backing a mutiny within ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MS Achille Lauro
MS ''Achille Lauro'' was a cruise ship based in Naples, Italy. Built between 1939 and 1947 as MS ''Willem Ruys'', a passenger liner for the Rotterdamsche Lloyd, it was Achille Lauro hijacking, hijacked by members of the Palestine Liberation Front in 1985. In other incidents, it also suffered two serious collisions (in 1953 with the and in 1975 with the cargo ship ''Youseff'') and four onboard fires or explosions (in 1965, 1972, 1981, and 1994). In the last of these, in 1994, the ship caught fire and sank in the Indian Ocean off Somalia. Concept and construction Ordered in 1938 to replace the aging ships on the Dutch East Indies route, her keel was laid in 1939 at De Schelde shipyard in Vlissingen, Netherlands, for Rotterdamsche Lloyd (now Nedlloyd). Interrupted by World War II and two bombing raids, the ship was finally launched in July 1946, as ''Willem Ruys''. The ship was named after the grandson of the founder of the Rotterdamsche Lloyd who was taken hostage and shot duri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alawites
The Alawis, Alawites ( ar, علوية ''Alawīyah''), or pejoratively Nusayris ( ar, نصيرية ''Nuṣayrīyah'') are an ethnoreligious group that lives primarily in Levant and follows Alawism, a sect of Islam that originated from Shia Islam. The Alawites revere Ali (Ali ibn Abi Talib), considered the first Imam of the Twelver school. The group is believed to have been founded by Ibn Nusayr during the 9th century. Ibn Nusayr was a disciple of the tenth Twelver Imam, Ali al-Hadi and of the eleventh Twelver Imam, Hasan al-Askari. For this reason, Alawites are also called ''Nusayris''. Surveys suggest Alawites represent an important portion of the Syrian population and are a significant minority in the Hatay Province of Turkey and northern Lebanon. There is also a population living in the village of Ghajar in the Golan Heights. Alawites form the dominant religious group on the Syrian coast and towns near the coast, which are also inhabited by Sunnis, Christians, and Ismail ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1979 Nahariya Attack
The 1979 Nahariya attack (codenamed by its perpetrators as the Nasser Operation) was a raid by four Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) militants in Nahariya, Israel on 22 April 1979. The group, consisting of Abdel Majeed Asslan, Mhanna Salim al-Muayed, and Ahmed al-Abras, and led by 16-year-old Samir Kuntar, used a small, boat to travel from Tyre, Lebanon to Israel. During the attack they killed three Israelis, including a father and two of his young children. Another child was accidentally suffocated in efforts to hide her from the attackers. Kuntar and al-Abras were captured, convicted of murder by an Israeli court, and sentenced to several life sentences. Both Kuntar and al-Abras were later set free in prisoner swap deals conducted between Israel and Lebanese militant organizations – al-Abras in 1985, and Kuntar in 2008. Details of the attack Arrival On 22 April 1979, a group of four Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) militants entered Israel from Lebanon by boat. Transla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nahariya
Nahariya ( he, נַהֲרִיָּה, ar, نهاريا) is the northernmost coastal city in Israel. In it had a population of . Etymology Nahariya takes its name from the stream of Ga'aton (river is ''nahar'' in Hebrew), which bisects it. History Early Bronze Age The ruins of a 3,400-year-old Bronze Age citadel were found in the coastal city of Nahariya near the beach on Balfour Street, at a site known to archaeologists as ''Khirbet Kabarsa''. The citadel was an administrative center serving the mariners who sailed along the Mediterranean coast. There is evidence of commercial and cultural relations with Cyprus and the rest of the Mediterranean region. The fortress was destroyed four times by conflagration and rebuilt each time. Byzantine period A church from the Byzantine period, dedicated to St. Lazarus, was excavated in the 1970s. It was destroyed by fire, probably at the time of the Persian invasion in 614. British Mandate of Palestine In 1934, work began to found Nahar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samir Kuntar
Samir Kuntar ( ar, سمير القنطار, also transcribed ''Sameer'', ''Kantar'', ''Quntar'', ''Qantar''; 20 July 1962 – 19 December 2015) was a Lebanese Druze member of the Palestine Liberation Front and Hezbollah. He was convicted of terrorism and murder by an Israeli court. After his release from prison as part of the 2008 Israel–Hezbollah prisoner exchange, he received Syria's highest medal, honored by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and designated a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the US government. In Israel, Kuntar is considered the perpetrator of one of the most brutal terrorist attacks in the country's history. On 22 April 1979, at the age of 16, Kuntar participated in the killing of an Israeli policeman and the attempted kidnapping of an Israeli family in Nahariya that resulted in the deaths of four Israelis and two of his fellow kidnappers. After his release, Kuntar became a senior official in Hezbollah. According to Druze sources, Hezbollah put ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West Bank
The West Bank ( ar, الضفة الغربية, translit=aḍ-Ḍiffah al-Ġarbiyyah; he, הגדה המערבית, translit=HaGadah HaMaʽaravit, also referred to by some Israelis as ) is a landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean in Western Asia that forms the main bulk of the Palestinian territories. It is bordered by Jordan and the Dead Sea to the east and by Israel (see Green Line (Israel), Green Line) to the south, west, and north. Under Israeli occupation of the West Bank, an Israeli military occupation since 1967, its area is split into 165 Palestinian enclaves, Palestinian "islands" that are under total or partial civil administration by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), and 230 Israeli settlements into which Israeli law in the West Bank settlements, Israeli law is "pipelined". The West Bank includes East Jerusalem. It initially emerged as a Jordanian-occupied territory after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, before being Jordani ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suicide Attack
A suicide attack is any violent Strike (attack), attack, usually entailing the attacker detonating an explosive, where the attacker has suicide, accepted their own death as a direct result of the attacking method used. Suicide attacks have occurred throughout history, often as part of a military campaign (as with the Japanese ''kamikaze'' pilots of 1944–1945 during World War II), and more recently as part of terrorism, terrorist campaigns (such as the September 11 attacks in 2001). While few, if any, successful suicide attacks took place anywhere in the world from 1945 until 1980, between 1981 and September 2015 a total of 4,814 suicide attacks occurred in over 40 countries, killing over 45,000 people. During this time the global rate of such attacks grew from an average of three a year in the 1980s to about one a month in the 1990s to almost one a week from 2001 to 2003 to approximately one a day from 2003 to 2015. Suicide attacks tend to be more deadly and destructive t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abu Abbas
Muhammad Zaidan (10 December 1948 – 8 March 2004), also known as Abu Abbas ( ar, أبو العباس ''Abū ʿAbbās'' ) or Muhammad Abbas, was (with Tal'at Ya'qoub) the founder and a leader of the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) Organization. Political background Zaidan was born in 1948 in Safed, Palestine, though other sources state that he was born in a Syrian refugee camp. He studied at the Damascus University where he joined the radical, pro-Syrian Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC) under Ahmed Jibril in 1968. In 1977, major disagreements arose between the PFLP-GC, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and other Palestinian factions based in Lebanon. Zaidan, who opposed Syrian involvement in the Lebanese war, left the PFLP-GC and created the PLF with Talaat Yaacoub, which eventually split into three separate factions (and then later re-merged). Zaydan's faction of the PLF, which was the largest of the three, moved its ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operation Wooden Leg
Operation "Wooden Leg" ( he, מבצע רגל עץ, ''Mivtza Regel Etz'') was an attack by Israel on the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) headquarters in Hammam Chott, near Tunis, Tunisia, on October 1, 1985. With a target 1,280 miles (2,060 km) from the operation's starting point, this was the most distant publicly known action undertaken by the Israel Defense Forces since Operation Entebbe in 1976. It United Nations Security Council Resolution 573, has been condemned by the United Nations Security Council. Background After being driven out of Lebanon in the 1982 Lebanon War, the Palestine Liberation Organization, PLO moved its headquarters to Tunisia. On September 25, 1985, three gunmen Larnaca yacht killings, hijacked an Israeli yacht off the coast of Larnaca, Cyprus, and killed three Israeli tourists on board. The victims were Reuven Paltsur, 53, his wife Esther 50, both of Haifa, and their friend Avraham Avneri, 53, of Arad who had taken a vacation cruise to ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tunis
''Tounsi'' french: Tunisois , population_note = , population_urban = , population_metro = 2658816 , population_density_km2 = , timezone1 = CET , utc_offset1 = +01:00 , timezone1_DST = , utc_offset1_DST = , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = 1xxx, 2xxx , area_code_type = Calling code , area_code = 71 , iso_code = TN-11, TN-12, TN-13 and TN-14 , blank_name_sec2 = geoTLD , blank_info_sec2 = .tn , website = , footnotes = Tunis ( ar, تونس ') is the capital and largest city of Tunisia. The greater metropolitan area of Tunis, often referred to as " Grand Tunis", has about 2,700,000 inhabitants. , it is the third-largest city in the Maghreb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Israeli Air Force
The Israeli Air Force (IAF; he, זְרוֹעַ הָאֲוִיר וְהֶחָלָל, Zroa HaAvir VeHahalal, tl, "Air and Space Arm", commonly known as , ''Kheil HaAvir'', "Air Corps") operates as the aerial warfare branch of the Israel Defense Forces. It was founded on May 28, 1948, shortly after the Israeli Declaration of Independence. , Aluf Tomer Bar has been serving as the Air Force commander. The Israeli Air Force was established using commandeered or donated civilian aircraft and obsolete and surplus World War II combat aircraft. Eventually, more aircraft were procured, including Boeing B-17s, Bristol Beaufighters, de Havilland Mosquitoes and P-51D Mustangs. The Israeli Air Force played an important part in Operation Kadesh, Israel's part in the 1956 Suez Crisis, dropping paratroopers at the Mitla Pass. On June 5, 1967, the first day of the Six-Day War, the Israeli Air Force performed Operation Focus, debilitating the opposing Arab air forces and attaining air suprema ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Larnaca
Larnaca ( el, Λάρνακα ; tr, Larnaka) is a city on the south east coast of Cyprus and the capital of the district of the same name. It is the third-largest city in the country, after Nicosia and Limassol, with a metro population of 144,200 in 2015. Larnaca is known for its palm-tree seafront also called Finikoudes (Greek: Φινικούδες) as well as the Church of Saint Lazarus, Hala Sultan Tekke, Kamares Aqueduct, and Larnaca Castle. It is built on the ruins of ancient Citium, which was the birthplace of Stoic philosopher Zeno. Larnaca is home to the country's primary airport, Larnaca International Airport. It also has a seaport and a marina. Names The name ''Larnaca'' originates from the Ancient Greek noun 'coffer, box; chest, e.g. for household stores; cinerary urn, sarcophagus, coffin; drinking trough, chalice'. An informal etymology attributes the origin of the name to the many ''larnakes'' (sarcophagi) that have been found in the area. Sophocles Hadjisavv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
