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1983
Geraldo Rivera, reporting for Eyewitness News in 1983, takes us to the front lines outside Tripoli where Yassir Arafat’s forces are fighting against Syrian-backed PLO rebels. We then go to Beirut, Lebanon and see the conditions of Arafat’s forces there. We also meet some of the marines from Bravo company, stationed at the Beirut airport. In the confusion of this war they are cut off from communicating with their loved ones, with Geraldo and the WABC team offering a remedy by bringing a message from home.
In October 1983, not long before this report, truck bombs were detonated in Beirut aimed at the international peacekeeping force. 241 U.S. and 58 French military personnel were killed, as well as civilians and the attackers themselves. The deadliest single day death toll for the Marine core since World War II.
The Lebanese civil war saw armed conflict in that country from 1975 to 1990.
Syrian and Israeli forces occupied different parts of Lebanon until 2005.
Today, this region is again in turmoil with many of the same actors. What will it take to see peace?
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