Soviet jetliner crashes in Luxembourg, kills 12
By The Associated Press
LUXEMBOURG A Soviet
jetliner carrying 77 people veered off
the runway, plunged into a stand of
trees and exploded in flames just
after landing at Luxembourg airport
last night. Police and fire officials
said 12 people were killed and 65
injured.
The survivors, some of them
burned severely, were taken to five
hospitals in the city and to a burn
center in Metz, France, about 37 •
miles to the south.
About 40 people, including six crew
members, apparently got out of the
burning plane on their own,
Luxembourg's RTL television said.
Some made it to a farmhouse not far
from where the plane came to rest,
while others fainted as they ran, the
report added.
Airport officials said the plane, an
Ilyushin 62 of the Soviet airline
Aeroflot, landed in clear weather,
carrying 66 passengers and a crew of
11. Cause of the subsequent crash was
not known.
Officials said those on board were
from several countries, but did not
provide details.
Police initially told reporters at the
scene that 53 people died and that 24
U.S. peace-keeping mission returns to Beirut
By STEVEN K. HINDY
Associated Press Writer
BEIRUT, Lebanon About 800
U.S. Marines returned to Beirut by
ship and helicopter yesterday and
took control of the airport from
departing Israeli forces in a new
peacekeeping operation slated to
last until all foreign armies are out
of Lebanon. •
The Marines, marching in
formation, wore camouflage
uniforms and flak jackets and
carried M-16 automatic rifles,
mortars and anti-tank weapons. The
rifles were unloaded, but the
Marines carried ammunition clips
and were under orders to load and
fire in self-defense.
Lebanese children waved and
smiled at the Marines. Many of the
leathernecks had their names
written on their helmets in Arabic,
the work of Lebanese army soldiers
who patrolled the port with the
Marines when the Americans spent
16 days in Beirut this summer.
"A lot of us are calling this Beirut
Part II," said Cpl. Mark Kearny of
Jefferson City, Tenn., who said some
of the Arabic lettering on his helmet
spelled out his nickname
"Cowboy."
It was the second time in a month
the Marines landed. The first
operation ended Sept. 10 after the
evacuation of PLO guerrillas from
the city ringed by Israel since June.
Syrian troops are camped in eastern
Lebanon, and President Reagan
says the Marines will stay until all
Members of the U.S. Marine Corps landed at Beirut's International Airport
yesterday as part of a peace•keeping mission stationed In Lebanon. Israeli
forces left Beirut early yesterday.
the
daily
were injured. The figure was altered
after survivors, including the pilot
and co-pilot; were taken to hospitals.
"We heard an extremely loud
engine noise that lasted for a few
seconds," said a man who lives next
to Findel Airport.
"Then there was silence," he said,
followed by a series of explosions that
continued for about 20 minutes.
Airport officials said the aircraft
landed at 8:23 p.m. (3:23 p.m. EDT),
and appeared to have made a proper
landing until it suddenly turned to the
right and skidded about 1,000 yards.
It shot over a small pond and
plunged into some woods, knocking
down trees for about 100 yards before
it came to a halt at the end of a small
valley, according to airport officials
and television reports. The explosions
followed and the plane caught fire.
About 250 members of emergency
medical and rescue teams were at the
scene. The Soviet ambassador and
other embassy personnel also were at
the airport.
Rescue workers brought powerful
lights to the scene of the crash and
called out for survivors in several
languages, including Russian.
RTL televison said it was the first
major air disaster in the history of
this tiny grand duchy of about 360,000,
Israelis and Syrians leave.
U.S. Embassy spokesman John
Reid said 400 more Marines would
land today along with tanks,
armored vehicles, and wire-guided
anti-tank weapons. Small boats from
the U.S. tank-landing ship
Hermitage reconnoitered the coast
in preparation for the landing.
The Marines, along with Italian
and French peacekeeping troops,
were requested by President Amin
Gemayel in the wake of the Sept. 14
assassination of his brother,
President-elect Baihir Gemayel,
and the massacre of hundreds of
men, women and children in the
Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps
Sept. 16-18.
Nearly 500 French troops who
formerly served with the U.N.
peacekeeping force in southern
Lebanon joined the 1,080 French
soldiers and 1,170 Italians who have
already deployed in the Sabra and
Chatilla camps and in central
Beirut.
The U.S. Embassy said roughly
400 Marines landed at the seaport
from the 6th Fleet ships Manitowoc
and Saginaw and drove in trucks and
jeeps south to Beirut international
airport at 4 p.m. (10 a.m. EDT).
At the airport, they joined 400
Marines who were ferried by
Chinook and Sea Stallion helicopters
from the helicopter-carrier Guam.
Some Marines manned a sand
bagged position with Lebanese
troops on the main road into the
airport, and other Marines cooked
dinner over campfires.
olle • ian
surrounded by Belgium, West
Germany and France.
In Metz, France, the Freyming
Merlebach Burn Center was placed
on alert and emergency teams were
called in to treat burn victims.
Traffic controllers in the airport
tower said the pilot had approached
from the west and landed without
instruments because weather
conditions were good.
"The air was clear, there was no
mist or anything," according to one
local reporter.
Luxembourg airport officials said
the Ilyushin was scheduled to
continue on to Lima, Peru, after the
stop in Luxembourg, where 15
passengers were to get off.
The most recent reported crash of
an Aeroflot airliner was last July 6.
An Ilyushin-62 crashed shortly
after takeoff from Moscow's
Sheremetyevo Airport, and Western
sources said about 90 people were
killed. Soviet authoritieS did not
release a casualty figure for the
crash, which was the sixth known air
disaster involving an 11-62 or its sister
plane, the 11-62 m.
The worst reported disaster
involving a Soviet airliner. was Oct.
13, 1972, when 176 people perished in
an Ilyushin jet crash in Moscow.
Still others marched in formation
to positions near the airport
runways. Some unloaded their gear
from vehicles parked in front of the
airport. They stopped reporters
from entering certain areas.
A U.S. information officer, Lt. Col.
Lee Delmore, said the Marines
would be deployed in a four square
mile area around the airport, about
one mile north of Israel's new lines.
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He said about 600 men would be
deployed on the airport grounds, and
another 600 would be in positions
near the north-south four-lane
highway that leads to the airport.
The eastern borders of the
American zone are marked at
Lialaki in the northeast and
Schweifat in the southeast, he said,
Marines view Beirut ruins
Troops say city resembles aftermath of 'nuclear war'
By G.G. LABELLE
Associated Press Writer
BEIRUT, Lebanon The waves and smiles came
mostly from children as the U.S. Marines wound their
way through Beirut yesterday, getting their first real
look at the destruction wreaked by seven years of civil
war and the Israeli invasion that began in June.
Sgt. Paul Reese of Hartford, Conn., shook his head
after the 45-minute drive from Beirut's port on the
- - _
city's north side to the airport on the south that the
Marines will patrol. He expressed his feelings about
what he'd seen in two words.
"Nuclear war," he said. "That's what it looks like."
The first Marines to come ashore arrived at the port
at 11:55 a.m. (5:55 EDT) aboard the landing ship
Manitowoc. The ship's prow opened, a steel ramp was
lowered and men and machinery were on the ground in
minutes. The landing ship Saginaw docked about 90
Minutes later and disgorged more Marines and several
dozen jeeps and trucks.
' The port in which they landed was a familiar one
the troops spent time in Lebanon earlier this summer.
Cpl. Mark Kearny of Jefferson City, Tenn., said he
was glad to be back in Beirut, describing how the
Marines had been waiting offshore aboard ships for
days and been told several times they'd be going
ashore, only to have the order rescinded each time
because Israeli forces refused to leave west Beirut.
"After that, when they finally tell you you're going in
and mean it, you say, `oh good,' " he said.
Rescue workers survey the wreckage of a Soviet plane that exploded after skidding off a runway after landing in
Luxembourg last night. Twelve people died and 65 were injured in the explosion.
and the zone extends westward to
the sea.
"There will be checkpoints, there
will be roving patrols, probably we
don't go east of the railroad," said
Delmore.
Navy Cmdr. Peter Litrenta
added: "Their rifles will not be
loaded, but they will have
ammunition with them, and they can
load instantly."
Like the French and Italians,
many of the Marines who arrived
Wednesday served in the
multinational force that guarded the
safety of Palestine Liberation
Organization guerrillas who were
evacuated from Israeli-besieged
Beirut in late August and early -
September.
• U.S. Ambassador Robert Dillon
greeted the Marines and said,
"...They'll be here long enough to do
the job to assist the government of
Lebanon in establishing control over
Beirut and the surrounding area."
He said the Israeli army would
have access to the airport only on an
emergency basis, "something
medical or a life-threatening
situation," and only with the
approval of the Lebanese army.
The Israelis had been demanding
a presence at the airport and the use
of one of its two runways for military
purposes.
SYRIA
"The departure of the Israelis
from the airport is a very important
symbol of turning over sovereignty
to the Lebanese people," Dillon said.
Asked if Israel had balked at the
idea, he replied: "I think there was
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some persuasion and the Israeli
government accepted our
proposals."
Munitions experts from the
Lebanese army detonated at least
two mines yesterday left behind by
the PLO near the airport. The
Marines will help the Lebanese clear
the mines.
The Marines' landings at the
airport started at 1:55 p.m., two
hours after the seaport landings.
The landing operation had been
scheduled for last Sunday, but was
delayed when the Israelis refused an
American demand they evacuate all
of Beirut.
The last Israeli soldiers pulled out
Israel feels guilt of massacre
TEL AVIV, Israel The
slaughter of Palestinian refugees
in Beirut is scarring the Israeli
soul with guilt.
"The day after the pogrom in
the refugee camps in Beirut, I
stood before the mirror for my
morning shave, and I spat in my
face," wrote Shalom Rosenfeld, a
former editor-in-chief of Israel's
prestigious daily newspaper
Maariv.
A crisis of moral values is
wracking the Jewish state and
threatening the stability of Prime
Minister Menachem Begin's
government.
"Something has broken," says
his predecessor, Yitzhak Rabin.
But the critics are not just Begin's
The destruction in the port is mainly from the 1975-76
civil war, when fighting turned what had been Beirut's
center into a deserted battleground of buildings with
only shards of glass for windows and walls pock
marked by small arms fire.
What the Marines saw yesterday was entirely new to
them. Israeli bombs dropped this summer left half
collapsed buildings along the route. Families could be
seen living in shattered apartment houses. Bomb
craters, burned out cars, sandbagged barricades and
piles of burning garbage lined the roadways.
Children smiled and waved as the convoys of nearly
50 vehicles, including 11 filled with troops, passed by.
There were also some smiles from adults, but most just
looked blankly at the Marines in their camouflage
uniforms. Three men playing cards on a street corner
barely looked up at the new army that had come to
The Marine convoy reached the airport shortly
before 5 p.m. (11 a.m. EDT), but other members of the
32nd Amphibious Marine Unit had been arriving at the
field by helicopter from the USS Guam for almost three
hours, after the Israelis met the U.S. demand that they
be out of the airport before the Marines entered.
Lance Turner, a medical corpsman from San Diego,
Calif., was asked if he thought patrolling the airport
and the surrounding area would be more risky than
being in the enclosed port.
"Well, we're more wide open out here, and you can't
really tell who is around," he said. "At least before,
you knew you had the water at your back."
Thursday, Sept. 30, 1982
Vol. 83, No. 49 16 pages University Park, Pa. 16802
Published by students of The Pennsylvania State University
4
,
of the airport just as the Marines
landed. However, the Israeli flag
was lowered at 12:15 p.m., and a
sign that said "Goodbye to Beirut"
was painted on the back of one of the
last jeeps to go.
Israeli army spokesman Shlomo
Malinik said Israeli forces would
pull back to the Beirut-Damascus
highway.
Malinik said the departure of the
last three jeeps, three armored cars
•and a few dozen Israelis from the
airport meant Israel had evacuated
the entire city. But an Israeli
Foreign Ministry source in Tel Aviv
said the last troops would pull out of
east Beirut early today.
political foes, like Rabin. They
also include people like Rosenfeld,
Israelis from the prime minister's
own ideological camp.
The breakdown is somewhere in
the psychological machinery that
drives Israelis to try to live up to
the image created by the founding
fathers of Israel a striving to be
a new breed, different from their
ghetto forefathers, removed from
the Old World of hatred, wars and
Holocaust.
Just as today's Israeli is proud
to believe he would never go like a
lamb to the slaughter, so he is
proud to think that he would never
treat people the way Jews have
been treated.
Please see MASSACRE, Page 6
AP Laserphoto
inside
o Despite a smaller staff and
less funding, On Drugs Inc. is
still trying to maintain its 24-hour
drug and alcohol information
and crisis intervention service in
State College Page 16
• Centre County Judge
Charles C. Brown Jr. grants the
Centre Daily Times the right to
intervene in the trial of Subrama
nyam Vedam
Page 2
• Former Nittany Lions Bill
Rishell and Frank Rocco sign
with a new USFL team, the Phila
delphia Stars Page 10
weather
Mostly sunny today after
some patchy morning fog with a
high of 72. Clear and cool tonight
with patchy fog forming toward
morning and a low of 50. Mostly
sunny and warm tomorrow after
some patchy morning fog with a
high near 75.
—by Craig Wagner
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