Another unit, armed with explosives, was dispatched to the section of the airfield where the two squadrons of MiGs were parked. Their task: to wreck the fighters.
But the Ugandans were not finished yet. Although many had fled, there were others, better trained, who had decided to stand and fight. Rapid fire was now raining down on the Israelis from Ugandans who had made their way to the roof of the control tower. The Israelis returned fire, but there was little chance of their hitting their targets high above them. The armoured car replied to the enemy on the roof with devastating bursts of fire and an RPG hit the top of the control tower with a flash and a blinding explosion. Paratroopers now raced towards the terminal. They knew they had to stop the Ugandans firing before any hostages could be rescued.
Commandos raced up the stairs armed with grenades. The first Israeli was shot through the chest, but two of his mates hurled grenades through the open door of the control room and waited. Seconds later the grenades exploded, ending all resistance, and the Ugandans surrendered. As they left the tower the Israelis threw four more grenades into the room, slammed the door and fled down the stairs.
The commandos ordered to destroy the MiGs were having a tough time. As they approached the fighters they encountered heavy automatic fire from the Ugandan guards. They replied with grenades which caused fires to burn around the MiGs, lighting up the immediate area. The Ugandans withdrew into the dark and continued firing at the Israelis, keeping them away from the aircraft. After some thirty minutes the Israelis had succeeded in setting the MiGs alight and they continually peppered them with gunfire. When they pulled back they knew there was no danger that the fighters would be able to follow the Hercules into the sky.
The Israelis had now been on the ground some forty minutes and they hadn’t even yet started to move the hostages out of the terminal, where they were lying in fear on the concrete floor with a dozen paratroopers standing guard over them. The hostages could still hear sporadic gunfire going on all around the airfield, which meant the Ugandan forces were not yet defeated.
A problem had occurred with the refuelling of the Hercules and, as the minutes ticked by, the decision was taken to abandon this procedure at Entebbe and head for Nairobi. The commanders were advised that the transport planes should have sufficient fuel left in their tanks to fly to Nairobi but no further. In any case, staying on the ground in the hope of fixing the refuelling equipment was probably a greater risk. No one knew what forces Idi Amin might have in reserve to throw into the battle, and if the Israeli aircraft were hit on the ground and put out of action there was the possibility of a terrifying massacre.
Teams of Israeli troops took off in their jeeps and Land Rovers to check the entire perimeter of the airfield for any Ugandan troops gathering for a counter-attack. They found none. It seemed the troops that hadn’t been killed or wounded in the firefights had fled into the surrounding bush. As soon as the Israelis returned the order was given to bring out the hostages from the terminal building and take them to the planes. A hundred paratroopers formed a protective guard for the frightened hostages, some carrying children, as they stumbled and ran from the terminal to the nearest Hercules.
As the plane prepared to take off Israeli commandos in their jeeps took up positions at the side and the end of the runway, checking that no Ugandan soldiers were preparing to take shots at it as it roared down the runaway. Other soldiers checked every room in the terminal, to make sure there were no hostages left. A final count was made on board the plane before take-off. Exactly fifty-three minutes after landing at Entebbe the first Hercules, with all the hostages on board, took off. The last Hercules, carrying the Israeli rearguard and the black Mercedes, lifted into the sky one hour and thirty-five minutes after landing.
Four years earlier, in 1972, the world had been shaken by another hostage crisis when eight Black September terrorists managed to penetrate security and take over the Israeli team’s living quarters at the Olympic Games in Munich. Two Israeli competitors, the weightlifter Yossef Romano and the wrestler Moshe Weinberger, were shot dead and eleven more members of the Israeli squad were taken hostage. The world was able to follow every move of the terrorists and the West German police in live television coverage as the drama unfolded. Black September demanded the release of two hundred Palestinians held in Israeli jails, but the Israelis refused point-blank to consider the demand. The embarrassed West German government agreed to give the terrorists, accompanied by the hostages, safe passage to Egypt and flew them all in two army helicopters to Fürstenfeldbrück military airfield.
But the West Germans had laid a trap. Police marksmen were lying in wait at the airfield and, as the terrorists and their hostages disembarked, police snipers opened fire with rifles, intending to take out the eight terrorists in one hit. In fact five terrorists were hit, two of them killed outright and the three others merely wounded. The remaining three terrorists weren’t finished yet. In the chaos surrounding the helicopters the three terrorists and their wounded colleagues dragged the hostages back to the helicopters as police armoured cars raced across the tarmac in a bid to prevent the terrorists forcing the hostages back on board. When the armoured cars were twenty metres away the terrorists turned their sub-machine guns on the hostages inside the choppers.
As the armoured cars screeched to a halt and armed police officers leapt out, the two helicopters exploded and burst into flames, killing everyone on board. At the final count all the hostages, five terrorists and one policeman were killed. Three terrorists survived and were captured. This attempt by police to execute a Special Forces-type hostage rescue had ended in total disaster because every single hostage had been killed. Governments around the world learnt a vital lesson that day. National police forces were simply not trained to tackle this type of situation. If governments were to successfully combat and defeat terrorism in actions where hostages had been taken, it was necessary to train elite counter-insurgency forces to an exceptionally high standard. These forces would lead the fight against international terrorism efficiently and ruthlessly. From that day on it was accepted that Special Forces within the army would be responsible for such missions.
Mossad is principally Israel’s foreign intelligence-gathering organisation, based originally on MI6, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. However, it also has a fearsome Special Forces arm which has been involved from time to time in organising assassination, kidnapping and bombing of terrorists. It has also taken part in raids on suspected terrorists’ homes, offices and headquarters, usually employing the same tactics, precision and professionalism as the SAS on comparable missions. Mossad was ordered by the Israeli government to hunt down and kill those Black September terrorists who organised the massacre at Munich. Instructions were given that no matter how long it took to track down and kill those responsible, the athletes who died at Munich would be avenged.
One month after Munich the first Black September terrorist was dead. Wael Zwaiter, Al Fatah’s official in Italy, was shot by two members of a Mossad hit squad of four men in the lift of the block of flats where he lived in Rome. That day Zwaiter arrived at his home alone and walked into the lift. Before the gates shut, two men stepped from the shadows and blasted him at point-blank range with handguns. The Mossad agents walked to a waiting car. There were no witnesses.
Some weeks later Mossad executed the second man, Mahmoud Hamshari, the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s senior official in Paris. This killing was more ingenious. One night the Mossad hit men gained access to Hamshari’s office and set up a remote-controlled telephone bomb. The following day Hamshari was working at his desk in his well-guarded office when he answered a phone call. As he picked up the receiver the bomb exploded, killing him instantly. Mossad had not completed its task yet, but by now Black September representatives across Europe were very worried.
In early 1973 Dr Bassel Rauf Kubeisy, a leading organiser of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Paris, was tracked down and shot dead by a Mossad
agent as he arrived home one dark night. He was shot in the back with a single bullet. The Mossad agent melted away into the night. And again there was no witness to the execution.
A few months later the man whom Mossad believed had masterminded the Munich massacre, an Algerian named Mohammed Boudia, was blown to pieces as an explosion ripped apart his car, which he had parked near the centre of Paris. One month later Ali Hassan Salameh, who had been responsible for a number of Black September operations in Europe, was tracked down by Mossad in the small market town of Lillehammer, in Norway.
The Israelis believed that Salameh was one of Black September’s most senior planners, responsible for directing and organising many successful missions. For this operation Mossad sent a team of eight agents to Oslo. They were taking no chances. They spent two weeks checking out the intelligence they had been given, masquerading as businessmen visiting Norway to purchase newsprint. Some of the group travelled up country while others stayed in a five-star hotel in the capital. They had been given the exact location of the wanted man, who lived a quiet life in Lillehammer, but they did not have the precise address.
Discreet enquiries were made and the Mossad agents discovered that Salameh lived with a Norwegian woman in a block of flats in a middle-class suburb of the town. They checked out the location and for two days kept watch on the apartment. They saw a swarthy man of North African appearance leaving his home in the morning and returning each evening. They confirmed that he was living with a Norwegian woman.
After two weeks the two Mossad gunmen were given the orders to take out Salameh. They decided to assassinate him by shooting him in the back as he returned home one evening in July 1973. Their escape was carefully planned because Mossad wanted to make sure their hit men were out of the country as quickly as possible so that the Norwegians would be unable to arrest them and put them on trial.
The Israeli government, which was kept apprised of every Mossad attack before it took place, knew that the Norwegian government would not take kindly to Mossad agents assassinating a man in cold blood, even though he was a member of Black September. Norway would have required the arrest of the suspect and then for Israel to seek leave to have him deported to Israel for his alleged offences through the due process of the Norwegian courts. But the Israeli government had no wish to obey the laws of Norway, or any other country for that matter. They wanted vengeance for the murderous attack on their Olympic team and they were determined to kill as many Black September suspects as possible.
On the evening of July 21 the Mossad gunmen were taken by car to the road where Salameh lived. They waited inside the car for his return, knowing that he arrived home at around 7 pm. Punctual as ever, the North African man was dropped off outside the block of flats by a friend, who then drove away. Waiting for him in the flat was his wife, who watched him get out of the car and walk towards the building.
She saw two men walk up behind her husband. One of them took out a gun from his shoulder holster and shot him in the back at point-blank range. She watched as her husband collapsed in a heap on the ground and the two men walked away. She immediately called the police and the ambulance service, then raced out to see her husband. But he was dead. Seconds later the Mossad gunmen were picked up and driven at speed the one hundred and fifty miles to Oslo, where they caught the first plane out of the country.
But Mossad had made a mistake. The man it murdered was not the Algerian Black September activist Ali Hassan Salameh but a totally innocent Moroccan named Ahmed Bouchiki, who was married to the Norwegian woman. To the world of secret services the Mossad blunder was a disgrace. It seemed extraordinary that Mossad’s eight agents tasked with the assassination never bothered to check the identity of Ahmed Bouchiki. It was such a rudimentary error. Mossad, the secret service that prided itself on ruthless efficiency and impeccable intelligence, had made a fundamental error that had not only killed an innocent man but also delivered a massive blow to its own reputation.
The Norwegian police acted with great speed. They deployed armed police around Oslo international airport and sent another group of armed police to the hotel in the city, where they knew a number of ‘Israeli businessmen’ had been staying. Though the two gunmen had escaped the net, the other six were arrested. Despite representations from the Israeli government at the highest level, the Norwegian government refused to bow to pressure and all six men were put on trial, convicted and sentenced to between two and five years in jail. All apologised in court for their appalling error. In fact none of the six Israelis served more than two years of their sentences.
Stunned by the blunder of its Mossad agents, the Israeli government put a halt to the plan to wipe out every Black September activist believed to have had a hand, even in the planning, of the Munich operation. The United States and several European governments, aware of the covert programme of assassinations, told the Israeli government that it should cease. Through normal diplomatic channels the European governments made it plain that they could no longer condone any killing of people in their countries.
Israel agreed, but secretly continued to track down Black September activists. Some six years later Mossad discovered that Salameh was living in Lebanon, and agents posing as Lebanese tracked him for two months. His apartment, his routine, his colleagues and the restaurants where he ate and the people he met were all discovered. In January 1979, as Salameh was driving his Mercedes towards Beirut from a village in the hills that he often frequented for meetings, Mossad set off a massive bomb parked in a car by the side of the road. At the precise moment Salameh drove by, the car exploded, destroying the two vehicles. Salameh was blown to pieces. It had taken a long time but Mossad had finally got its man.
CHAPTER 6
HEROES OF THE SEA
THE MEN MAINLY RESPONSIBLE for Britain’s success in the Falklands War of 1982 were the Royal Marine Commandos of the Special Boat Service, who provided the vital intelligence necessary for the successful invasion of the island. The risks they took have never been fully recognised, for those SBS men were landed on the Falkland Islands before war had been declared and therefore, if any had been captured, the Argentines would have been within their legal rights under the Geneva Convention to treat them as spies rather than prisoners of war. And the British government would have had little or no legal recourse to prevent their execution if they had been found guilty of spying.
But every member of the SBS who landed on the Falklands knew the great risk they were taking in this respect and realised that each of their many missions behind enemy lines was fraught with danger. To add to the perils facing them, they were working almost entirely alone, with no back-up.
The Falklands conflict was tailor-made for the tactics and techniques of the SBS, which was in its element and rose brilliantly and courageously to the challenge. Although its vital task in the Falklands was reconnaissance, it was also responsible for carrying out other typical Special Forces roles, including raiding, initial assault and deep penetration.
But the SBS’s first involvement in the Falklands War was a defensive role against overwhelming odds. A tiny Royal Marine Commando unit of some twenty-two men was guarding South Georgia, the largest of a small group of islands on the edge of Antarctica. On the morning of April 1 1982 they awoke to find that an Argentine frigate, the Guerrico, had entered Grytviken harbour on South Georgia and was ordering them to surrender, otherwise it would open fire on them with their powerful guns.
In command of the British force was Lieutenant Keith Mills , who rejected the order to surrender. Despite the fact that his men were facing a David and Goliath conflict, the young Royal Marine Commando ordered them to open fire against the frigate with their rifles, light machine guns and 66mm rockets. Of course, these weapons were useless against a frigate with its powerful guns, but the Guerrico’s captain was uncertain exactly what soldiers and artillery the British force had at its disposal.
But worse was to follow. As the Argentine ship steamed out of the harbour the
Marines rapidly constructed what defences they could, fearing a full artillery barrage. Lieutenant Mills opened up his wireless connection with the British forces on the Falklands, informing them of what had happened. He also told the senior British Army commander that they had repulsed the first Argentine attack but were expecting renewed action. They didn’t have to wait long.
As soon as the Guerrico had withdrawn out of range of the light British weapons, it opened up with its powerful 100mm guns. Though the British defences were taking a ferocious battering, the Marines refused to surrender. Mills believed that if the Argentines were to launch an attack and land forces from the ship, his men would be quite capable of putting up serious resistance. He guessed that the troops on board the frigate would not be battle-hardened and hoped that they would not include any Special Forces.
Mills discussed the desperate situation with his men, giving his personal opinion that they couldn’t hope to hold out without further support from either Royal Navy warships or British warplanes. He explained that there were no RAF warplanes on the Falklands to come to their rescue and so there was little chance of their withstanding a prolonged bombardment from the frigate. Despite this downbeat review of their situation, all the Marines agreed that they should continue to defend the island, for no matter how small and insignificant South Georgia was to the British Crown, the island was nevertheless a British settlement and therefore entitled to be defended, regardless of the risk. As one of them commented at the time, ‘We must not forget that Royal Marine Commandos never surrender unless we are ordered to – and no one has given us that command.’
The battle for South Georgia continued. The Guerrico went on pounding the Marines’ positions, but as these were well fortified the shells were unable to cause much damage. Occasionally the British would fire back, simply to show they were still alive and well and capable of defending themselves, but their rounds fell harmlessly into the sea, well short of their target.
Death Before Dishonour - True Stories of The Special Forces Heroes Who Fight Global Terror Page 11
