As Syrian and Israeli ground forces continued the battle for control of Mount Hermon, both sides sent jets into action. Saying it was the first time Syria had used aircraft since the October war, military spokesmen in Damascus said Syrian planes had inflicted heavy losses on Israeli positions and that one Israeli plane had been set afire by anti-aircraft fire — a claim disputed by Israeli spokesmen in Tel Aviv. Artillery duels, in which tank guns were also used, were continuing in the Mount Hermon area and all along the Golan Heights front. Such exchanges have been going for more than five weeks. The action marked the 38th day of artillery duels along the front and the fifth use of Israeli planes since the struggle for control of Mount Hermon began just over a week ago.
According to a Syrian military spokesman in Damascus, Syrian planes inflicted heavy losses on Israeli positions on Mount Hermon and at various other points of the front, and Syrian antiaircraft defenses set an. Israeli jet afire. “It was seen heading westward in flames,” he said. Fighting on the snow‐capped mountain was said to have gone on through last night. According to reports from Beirut, Lebanon, United Nations ceasefire observers found Syrian and Israeli infantry patrols fighting each other on the northeastern slopes of the mountain, in Lebanese territory. Announcing today’s air action, the spokesman said: “Our Air Force has dealt concentrated blows to enemy positions and assembly points on Mount Hermon and several other parts of the front, inflicting heavy losses in men and material.” He reported the destruction of an Israeli missile vehicle and crew, a tank detachment and several armored vehicles and two ammunition dumps. He said direct hits had been scored on several strongpoints, two observation posts, and several support points.
Israeli planes attacked Syrian positions around Mount Hermon today shortly after Syrian jets made their first raids since the October war, an Israeli military spokesman in Tel Aviv reported. An Israeli military spokesman said that Israeli planes had tried to make contact with the Syrian aircraft bombing Israeli positions but that the Syrian jets departed before the Israelis arrived. The chief targets of the Israeli planes appeared to be Syrian artillery posts, which have been shelling Israeli forces entrenched atop Mount Hermon, as well as Syrian engineering units said to be building a road up the slopes. The Israeli command said the Syrian planes were driven off after only a few minutes over Mount Hermon.
A hand grenade exploded this morning in group of Arabs on a street corner in a suburb of Tel Aviv, injuring 12 Arabs and one Jew. The grenade was thrown at 6:30 AM at a traffic island uses as a labor market for workers from Israeli‐occupied Jordan. The Arabs had been waiting for buses that pick up workers each morning, mainly for construction jobs. A police source said that it was not clear whether the explosion was part of an Arab guerrilla campaign to deter Arabs from working for the Israelis or whether it was by Jews seeking revenge for the slaying of 18 persons last week in Qiryat Shemona, a town near the Lebanese border. A police announcement said that the grenade was of the type used by the Israeli armed forces. Scores of Arabs who scattered after the explosion were chased and caught by Israelis, who turned them over to the police. The police held 160 people this afternoon put released some of them after their identities were checked.
In Jerusalem yesterday, a plot to explode a booby‐trapped taxi cab in a busy business street was discovered in time and foiled. According to the police, guerrillas strangled an Israel taxi driver, placed his body, in the trunk of his cab and strapped it to a time bomb of about 18 ounces of explosives a tank of cooking gas and a can of gasoline. They parked the car in Ben Yehuda Street. The cab was spotted by the driver’s wife, who had gone looking for him the police towed the cab away and experts dismantled the bomb.
President Anwar Sadat of Egypt announced that Egypt would end more than 18 years of exclusive reliance on Soviet arms and seek arms from other sources. Mr. Sadat said he made the decision because the Soviet Union had not acted on Egyptian arms requests during the last six months. Though he did not name alternative suppliers, Arab diplomats indicated Egypt would seek arms from Arab oil nations.
In some of the sharpest language heard in the U.N. Security Council, Israeli Ambassador Yosef Tekoah angrily denounced Iraq’s pro-Nazi record in World War II as well as its council membership and urged the disqualification of the Iraqi representative, Talib el-Shibib, from his current position as president of the body. Shibib, after being defended by Soviet Ambassador Vasily Safronchuk, replied by saying the General Assembly elected Iraq to the council by 116 votes and was not subject to Israel’s “whims and desires.”
A Tehran newspaper said Kurdish rebels shot down an Iraqi MIG-21 fighter-bomber and destroyed a tank in clashes with government troops in northern Iraq. The paper, quoting a Kurdish guerrilla radio station, said heavy fighting was under way in several northern Iraqi provinces.
Ethiopian Premier Endalkachew Makonnen announced that security forces had been ordered to put under house arrest all cabinet ministers of the government that was forced to resign in February by a mutiny in the armed forces.
The Saigon command said that Communist saboteurs blew up South Vietnam’s longest bridge, cutting a government artery linking cities along the length of the South China Sea. The command said the guerrillas destroyed two spans of the 450-yard-long bridge of Highway 1 outside Quy Nhon city, 250 miles north of Saigon.
Việt Cộng delegates say the South Vietnamese Government is isolating them in their compound at Saigon air base and sabotaging the Two‐Party Joint Military Commission, Radio Hanoi said today. South Vietnamese Government officials were not immediately available for comment on the charge. The broadcast, quoting an announcement it said was issued by the Việt Cộng delegation, said that the Saigon Government “has carried out a series of sabotaging measures in brutal infringement of the privileges and immunities” of the Việt Cộng negotiators. The broadcast said that the Việt Cộng delegates’ air service, newspapers and telephones had been curbed or cut off. The broadcast also charged that the Saigon Government had refused to “provide security guarantees for the delegation inside and outside the compound.”
The seven Warsaw Pact states of Eastern Europe said they had found it necessary to strengthen their defense potential in the absence of Western disarmament. A communique issued at the end of a two-day meeting in Warsaw by the pact’s top-level political consultative committee stated, however, that the Warsaw bloc would be dissolved if the Atlantic Alliance was ended.
U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy arrived in Moscow tonight and asserted that Soviet leaders should understand that American institutions would emerge stronger from the Watergate affair and that regardless of political party “there is a continuing U.S. commitment on the main East‐West issues.” The Massachusetts Democrat, who is scheduled to meet the Soviet Communist leader, Leonid I. Brezhnev, during his week’s stay, said in response to a question that he would expect to raise issues of free emigration and civil liberties at the meeting. In recent months the Soviet press has been critical of foes of President Nixon. Mr. Kennedy sought to rebut any notion that his party was any less committed to détente than the Republicans. “This is a difficult time in the United States,” be said, “but our institutions are strong and are working and will come through these difficulties stronger. The Soviets should understand this and should also understand that there is a continuing U.S. commitment on the main East‐West issues.”
The French Socialist leader, François Mitterrand, promised today to strengthen the franc, protect savers against the erosion of inflation, reform the tax structure, and promote exploits in a revised financial program that he hoped would attract votes from the center in the presidential election next month. The 57‐year-old Mr. Mitterrand is running under a program in common with the Communist party against two principal rivals on the right, Jacques Chaban‐Delmas, 59‐year‐old former Gaullist Premier and Resistance hero, and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, 48‐year‐old Finance Minister and leader of a conservatively-oriented party allied with the Gaullists in the National Assembly.
The Red Brigade kidnapped Italian attorney general Mario Sossi. He would be released on 22 May of this year following a prisoner swap with the Italian government.
Kidnappers today released Fazio Longhi, 16‐year‐old son of a Milan industrialist, after holding him for two months, the police said. The family was reported to have paid a ransom.
The number of Roman Catholic priests in the world is continuing to fall, the Vatican reported. According to the report, the number of priests dropped by 2,907 to 343,329 during 1973. At the same time, the number of Catholics in the world rose from 543,534,820 to 548,289,130.
The pressure on left-wing Portuguese politicians and journalists continued with 12 more arrests by security police, relatives and eyewitnesses said in Lisbon. More than 40 were seized in a previous roundup, but were released after questioning. No reason had been given for the arrests.
A gold bullion shipment valued at more than $165,700 was stolen from an Air Canada cargo depot at Ottawa’s airport, police said. The five bars, individually boxed and weighing a total of 339.64 pounds, were en route from the Campbell Red Lake mines in northern Ontario to the Canadian mint. A lone security guard was overpowered and his revolver taken during the theft.
Four Latin American countries proposed that Cuba be invited to a hemisphere foreign ministers’ meeting next March. The United States offered no objection, but asked for a poll of other participating countries before a decision is made. The stance suggested that the United States was relaxing its 13-year policy of isolating Cuba from hemisphere affairs, but a high State Department official insisted there had been no change in United States policy.
A Honduran newspaper reported that Honduran and El Salvador troops had fought their worst border clash since a four-day war in 1969. El Dia in Tegucigalpa said the clash occurred near the Goascaran River about 60 miles southwest of Tegucigalpa.
Niger’s military rulers who overthrew President Hamani Diori last Monday reopened Niamey Airport and shortened the curfew in moves aimed at returning the country to normal. The new regime led by Lieutenant Colonel Seyni Kountché said, meanwhile, that Libyan Premier Abdel Salam Jalloud was expected in Niamey for talks.
The nation suffered the largest quarterly decline in production since the recession year of 1958 — and the steepest rate of inflation since 1951 — during the first quarter of this year, the Commerce Department reported. The output of goods and services declined at an annual rate of 5.8 percent, while prices rose at the rate of 10.8 percent during the quarter.
In response to the Zebra murders that had claimed 14 lives in California since October 20, San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto and the San Francisco City Police instituted “Operation Zebra”, stopping African-American men throughout the city for interrogations and the recording of identifying information. Over the next six days, 567 black men were stopped and 181 interrogated without yielding any information helpful to finding the Zebra murderers. The police action, begun after the latest killing on Wednesday, drew immediate protests from civil liberties groups. U.S. District Judge Alfonso Zirpoli ruled that stopping suspects without probable cause was unconstitutional.
Randolph A. Hearst today denounced Attorney General Wilham B. Saxbe for referring his kidnapped daughter, Patricia Hearst, as a common criminal. “To call her a common criminal is irresponsible Mr. Hearst said. He characterized Mr. Saxbe’s comment as added proof that the Attorney General “talks off the top of his head when he should be listening.” The Attorney General said during an interview in Washington yesterday that, in his opinion, Miss Hearst was not a reluctant participant in bank robbery here Monday. He called the robbers common criminals, and when asked if that applied to Miss Hearst, too, he replied: “And Miss Hearst is a part of it.”
The status of the 20‐year‐old college student, who was abducted at gunpoint from her Berkeley apartment last February 4, has been in doubt in the last two weeks. She said in a tape-recorded message to her parents that she was free to leave her kidnappers, but that she had decided to join the group that calls itself the Symbionese Liberation Army.
U.S. District Judge John J. Sirica ordered President Nixon to release 64 specific tape recordings that had been subpoenaed by the Watergate special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, and to do so by May 2. The White House declined to comment on whether it would comply with the order. A subpoena commanding President Nixon to give the Watergate prosecutor tape recordings and other records relating to 64 White House conversations was served on the White House shortly after it had been approved by federal Judge John Sirica at the request of Leon Jaworski, the special prosecutor. The White House would say only that “counsel is considering” the subpoena, which was accepted for the President by his lawyer, James St. Clair, and is returnable on May 2.
The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee ruled out any compromise with the White House over the committee’s subpoena of some 42 White House tapes. Representative Peter Rodino said it would be unacceptable for President Nixon’s lawyers to decide unilaterally which portions of the material were relevant to the committee’s impeachment inquiry.
President Nixon named Virginia Trotter, a vice chancellor of the University of Nebraska, as Assistant Secretary for Education in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, It is the first time a woman has been named to the government’s highest education post, and her appointment, which is subject to Senate confirmation, is expected to meet wide approval within the education community.
The New York City Bar Association announced that it was looking into the possibility of bringing disbarment proceedings against President Nixon. John Bonomi, head of the group’s committee on discipline, said the bar in a “preliminary investigation” was scrutinizing the legal propriety of the President’s action in connection with Watergate, the Ellsberg burglary and illegal campaign contributions. He also listed former Attorney General John N. Mitchell, David Young, former co-director of the White House “plumbers” group, and former White House aide Gordon C. Strachan as subjects of the inquiry.
Allard K. Lowenstein accused five former White House officials of conspiring through an “enemies list” to engineer his defeat in a New York congressional Democratic primary election. In a suit filed in Brooklyn federal court, Lowenstein said the officials, who left because of the Watergate scandal, were responsible for wiretapping, infiltration by secret agents, reports from informants and seizures of private documents. Among those named in the suit were Charles W. Colson, former presidential counsel, H. R. Haldeman, former White House chief of staff, former presidential domestic counsel John D. Ehrlichman and ousted White House counsel John W. Dean III.
The General Motors Corporation disclosed today that its chairman, Richard C. Gerstenberg, received a 5.5 percent raise last year, lifting his total compensation by $48,037 to $923,000 and keeping him well in the lead as the highest paid executive in the country. The company had a record year in terms of sales and profits despite the slump in sales toward the end of the year because of the energy crisis. But this year the corporation finds itself in a more awkward position, with an oversupply of big cars that are not selling, and not enough capacity to make small cars, which now account for more than one‐half of the market.
New York City police were seeking two men and two women who tried to cut through a steel partition to help three alleged Black Liberation Army members escape from prison. Their plot failed, however, when their acetylene torch ran out of fuel. Police said the four went into a visiting area of the Manhattan House of Detention and attempted to free Albert Washington, 31, and Francisco Torres, 24, both being detained in connection with the murders of two policemen, and Henry Brown, 25, being held on bank robbery charges. Police identified the four as Michael Alston, 22, Howard W. Simmons, 24, Frankie Mae Adams, 28, and Collette Ali, 22.
A fact-finding board recommended that air traffic controllers be given the authority to refuse to land airplanes during violent thunderstorms. The National Transportation Safety Board made the recommendation as a result of an Ozark Airlines crash during a thunderstorm at St. Louis last July. Thirty-six of the 44 persons aboard were killed. The safety board has not yet determined the cause of that accident but it said the pilot radioed before the crash that he believed he was in a tornado and that the plane had been struck at least once by lightning. Under current regulations, only the airport manager can close down an airport.
Apparently fearing that similar crimes might have been committed elsewhere, authorities at Folly Beach, South Carolina, were checking out the former duty stations of a Bible-toting sailor who led them to the graves of two teen-age girls. The suspect, Richard Raymond Valenti, stationed aboard the submarine tender USS Petrel, was charged with murdering the two girls, plus the murder of a third teenage girl whose body was found in the same area earlier this week. Police said they picked up Valenti on a tip and after questioning he led them to a sand dune where the bodies were unearthed.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 869.92 (+2.51, +0.29%).
Born:
Edgar Wright, English film director (“Shaun of the Dead”), in Poole, Dorset, England, United Kingdom.
Mark Tremonti, American rock guitarist and singer (Creed, “With Arms Wide Open”), in Detroit, Michigan.
Lorraine Pilkington, Irish actress (“Human Traffic”), in Dublin, Ireland.
Died:
John Henry Lewis, 59, American boxer (World Light-Heavyweight champion, 1935-1938), of emphysema and Parkinson’s Disease.
Betty Compson, 77, American actress (“The Barker”).
Marcel Pagnol, 79, French novelist, playwright and filmmaker (“Topaze”, “The Baker’s Wife”).
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