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Witness History

The attack on Lod Airport

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.41.6K Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2022

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In May 1972, Japanese gunmen attacked Lod airport in Tel Aviv, Israel. They were left-wing militants working for a Palestinian organisation. Twenty-six people were killed that day and more than 70 others were injured. In 2011, Simon Watts spoke to Ros Sloboda, one of the survivors of the shooting.

PHOTO: Kozo Okamoto, one of the Japanese gunmen, on trial in Israeli in 1972 (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0

Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless

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0:19.0

Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.

0:21.0

And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less

0:24.9

searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. Hello and thank you for downloading the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service.

0:40.0

Today we're going back 50 years to an attack on Lod Airport near Tel Aviv

0:44.8

in which more than 20 people were killed. This report from Simon Watts was

0:49.5

first broadcast in 2011 and a warning that listeners may find some of the details of the attack distressing.

0:57.0

It's May the 30th 1972 and a team of gun men launch an attack at Israel's main airport.

1:04.0

They are Japanese left-wing extremists,

1:06.2

working for a Palestinian organization.

1:09.2

These three men apparently arrived at Tel Aviv Airport on an Air France plane.

1:14.0

Ey witnesses say the men waited with the other passengers at the luggage conveyor belt inside the customs hall.

1:21.0

When their luggage arrived, they took Kowatchnikov automatic rifles and

1:26.1

hand grenades from their suitcases and opened fire indiscriminately at everyone in their vicinity.

1:33.0

Ross Laboda, a British woman living in Israel, had just reached the airport.

1:38.0

Then 23, she gone with a friend to meet a plane arriving from the UK.

1:43.0

The flight from London that our friend was on was announced as approaching,

1:47.0

so we got up to move towards the arrivals hall, and in those days the place where people stood to meet those who had arrived

...

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