Kiryat Shmona is a small Israeli village near the Israel-Lebanon border.[2] In the early morning on 11 April 1974, three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command crossed the border from Lebanon into Israel. They first entered the Janusz Korczak elementary school, but the classrooms were empty due to Jewish holiday of Passover. The attackers went undetected for over an hour. They then crossed the street and entered an apartment building at 13 Yehuda Halevi Street.[3][2]
The attackers killed a number of residents at the apartment building before moving to the building next door. They first killed the building's gardener before climbing the staircase and shooting those they encountered. The three gunmen then barricaded themselves in an apartment on the top floor. In the exchange of gunfire with responding Israeli soldiers, the attackers' backpack of explosives was detonated, killing the three attackers.[3]
According to Israeli police, the attacks were equipped with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and threw children from the top floor of the building.[2]
Eighteen people were killed, 8 of them children. Two of the slain Israelis were soldiers, and the rest were civilians.[3][1][4] and 16 were wounded.[2]
A splinter Palestinian group claimed credit for what it called a "suicide attack" via a telephone statement to the media. The group claimed the goal of the attack was the release of 100 fighters from Israeli prisons.[2]
Reactions
Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban expressed disappointment in the Egyptian media's reaction to the attack, after Israeli hopes that the Israel-Egypt Disengagement Treaty of 1974 meant "a new wind of change blowing from Cairo."[1]
The Representative Council of Jews of France (CRIF) blamed a perceived policy of weakness and abandonment from the West, including France. François Mitterrand sent a condolence telegram to Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir for the "criminal aggression which once again has struck innocent civilian victims."[1]
Only after Israel's reprisal raid in southern Lebanon the following week did France simultaneously condemn the massacre.[1]
According to The Times of Israel, by 2014, 50 years after the attack, it had largely faded from Israeli consciousness. That year, Lisa Peretz, Robby Elmaliah and Ilanit Baumann premiered their film "A Haunted Home" about the events and the lasting trauma on residents of Kiryat Shmona at the Jerusalem Film Festival.[3]
