Negotiations Preceded Attack On Convoy of Fleeing Lebanese

Israeli Military Places Blame for Killings on U.N. Force

KEFRAYA, Lebanon -- Darkness had descended on the Bekaa Valley when the long convoy of cars snaked up a gentle slope toward Kefraya. In better times, the little town was celebrated for its wine. But to the Lebanese fleeing the war that night, it was a way station on the road to safety.

Or so they thought.

A dry boom rang out without warning shortly before 10 p.m., and the second car in the convoy exploded in flames, witnesses recounted. In the blackness, no one understood at first. People alighted from their cars to see what was the matter. The buzz of an Israeli drone was heard overhead -- some recalled hearing two drones -- and the awful realization settled over the travelers that they were under attack.

"I could never have imagined that there could be an attack on this convoy of 3,000 civilians, men, women and children," said Karamallah Daher, who was driving to Beirut that night with his 80-year-old mother, Neifeh.

But the attack was underway, just at the entrance to this little community 40 miles southwest of Beirut. Before it was over about 15 minutes later, a half-dozen missiles had been fired and seven people were killed, including a retreating Lebanese soldier, a Red Cross volunteer and five other civilians, and 36 people had been wounded, according to Red Cross and government officials.

The attack on the convoy, during the height of fighting on Aug. 11, was one of the least understood and most tragic chapters of the 33-day war between Hezbollah and Israel. For reasons still under dispute, a column of hundreds of cars carrying Lebanese troops and panic-stricken civilians from the border town of Marjayoun came under a sustained Israeli missile attack more than 30 miles north of the battle zone along the Lebanese-Israeli frontier.

"Really, it's a mystery," said Marjayoun's mayor, Fuad Hamra, who was in the convoy but came out unharmed. "Why the Israelis did it, really? I don't know."

The Israeli military issued a statement early the next morning saying the column was attacked because of suspicions -- which the military later acknowledged were baseless -- that the cars were smuggling arms for Hezbollah fighters. In the same statement, the military said it had received a request for safe passage for the convoy from the United Nations but that it had been turned down.

Milos Stugar, spokesman for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, said that the request was granted. His statement was confirmed Wednesday by Gen. Alain Pelligrini, the UNIFIL commander, who said: "We had a green light."

In a written response to questions from The Washington Post, the Israeli military put responsibility for the killings on UNIFIL, saying U.N. officials ignored Israeli orders to prevent the column from moving.

The military, formally called the Israel Defense Forces, "suspected that the vehicles were either returning from a weapons delivery to Hezbollah terrorists in the south or were fleeing from IDF forces with their weapons," the statement added. It did not address the questions of what led the Israeli military to believe the cars were carrying weapons or how, if a request for safe passage had come from the United Nations, the Israeli military could believe it was seeing a Hezbollah convoy.

Facing Israeli Forces

---

Israeli forces entered Marjayoun without opposition before dawn on Aug. 10, eager to demonstrate they controlled a swath of Lebanese land. It was familiar. The town, a Christian community six miles north of the Galilee panhandle, was headquarters for the Israeli-sponsored South Lebanon Army during Israel's 18-year occupation of the border zone that ended six years ago.