Bus Massacre in Lebanon: Civil War Erupts
Phalangist gunmen attacked a bus carrying Palestinian passengers through the Christian neighborhood of Ain el-Remmaneh on April 13, 1975, killing 27 people in retaliation for an alleged earlier attack on a church. The massacre ignited the Lebanese Civil War, a 15-year conflict that killed an estimated 120,000 people and displaced one million in a country of just three million. The war drew in Syrian troops, Israeli invasions in 1978 and 1982, Iranian-backed Hezbollah, and Palestinian factions. Beirut, once called the Paris of the Middle East, was divided into Christian east and Muslim west sectors by a devastated no-man's-land called the Green Line. The war ended with the 1989 Taif Agreement, but its sectarian political structure persists today.
April 13, 1975
51 years ago
Key Figures & Places
Lebanon
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Lebanese Civil War
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Bus Massacre
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Phalangist
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Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
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Phalangist
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1975 Beirut bus massacre
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Kataeb Party
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Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
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Lebanese Civil War
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Lebanon
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Palestinians
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فادي إبراهيم
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فريال كريم
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