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SAMs and the targeting of Israeli airliners
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| 28 November 2002 |
Yesterday’s surface-to-air missile attack on a Tel Aviv-bound Arkia airlines Boeing 757 as it took off from Mombasa, Kenya, is not the first time terrorists have used such weapons to target Israeli carriers.
In 1973 the Italian police, acting on a tip-off from the Israeli external intelligence agency, Mossad, arrested five Palestinian militants from the Black September terrorist group in an apartment overlooking Rome International airport runway. The terrorists were caught just as they were about to launch an SA-7 ‘Strela’ missile (the same type believed to have been used in yesterday's attack) against an El-Al airliner taxiing into position for take-off.
In 1985 four terrorists - two German Red Brigades members and two Palestinians - had again planned to attack an El Al airliner with SA-7s, this time at Nairobi Airport. However, the group was arrested by Kenyan airport police before they could mount the attack. All four were handed over to Mossad agents, who flew them back to Israel for questioning and trial.
Another, albeit unconfirmed, attack occurred on 9 July 2002, when the pilot of an El Al Boeing 757 on route to Moscow from Tel Aviv reported a strong flash of light in the night sky over Dnepopetrovsk in southeastern Ukraine. The pilot, who was a combat-experienced Israeli reservist, identified the flash as the launch of a surface-to-air missile.
It is believed that at least some Israeli airliners use infra-red countermeasures as a precaution against SAM attacks, although it is not known whether such a system was fitted on the Arkia flight attacked yesterday.