Damour massacre
| Damour massacre | |
|---|---|
| Part of the Lebanese Civil War | |
| Location | Damour, Lebanon |
| Coordinates | 33°44′N 35°27′E / 33.733°N 35.450°ECoordinates: 33°44′N 35°27′E / 33.733°N 35.450°E |
| Date | January 20, 1976 (cc) |
|
Attack type
|
Massacre |
| Deaths | 150-582 civilians |
| Perpetrators | Palestine Liberation Organization, Lebanese National Movement |
The Damour massacre took place on January 20, 1976, during the 1975–1990 Lebanese Civil War. Damour, a Maronite town on the main highway south of Beirut, was attacked by Palestine Liberation Organisation units. Part of its population died in battle or in the massacre that followed, and the remainder were forced to flee.
The Ahrar and the Phalangist militias based in Damour and Dayr al Nama had been blocking the coastal road leading to southern Lebanon and the Chouf, and this turned them into a threat to the PLO and its leftist and nationalist allies in the Lebanese civil war. The Damour massacre was a response to the Karantina massacre of January 18, 1976, in which Phalangists killed from 1,000 up to 1,500 people.
It occurred as part of a series of events during the Lebanese Civil War, in which Palestinians joined the Muslim forces, in the context of the Christian-Muslim divide, and soon Beirut was divided along the Green Line, with Christian enclaves to the east and Muslims to the west.
Twenty Phalangist militiamen were executed, and then civilians were lined up against a wall and sprayed with machine-gun fire. None of the remaining inhabitants survived. An estimated 582 civilians died. Among the killed were family members of Elie Hobeika and his fiancée. Following the Battle of Tel al-Zaatar later the same year, the PLO resettled Palestinian refugees in Damour. After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the Zaatar refugees were expelled from Damour, and the original inhabitants brought back.
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