We have mentioned Israel’s elite special forces unit, Sayeret Matkal, on here before. The unit has history dating back to 1957 and has been used as a model extensively to develop anti-terrorism practices. There must famous mission has to be Operation Entebbe.
On June 27, 1976, Air France Flight 139, an Airbus A300B4-203, departed from Tel Aviv, Israel carrying 246 passengers and a crew of 12. The plane flew to Athens, Greece and picked up an additional 58 passengers including 4 hijackers. From Greece the plan departs for Paris but just after takeoff the flight is hijacked by two Palestinians from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – External Operations (PFLP-EO). The two are accompanied by two Germans, Wilfried Bose and Brigitte Kuhlmann from the German Revolutionary cells. Immediately the hijackers redirected the flight to Benghazi, Libya where it was held on the ground for seven hours for refueling and led to the rescue of one passenger who faked a miscarriage. The plane departed Benghazi and headed for Entebbe Airport in Uganda.
At Entebbe, four other hijackers joined the existing four and were all believed to be supported by the forces of Uganda’s president, Idi Amin. The hijackers moved all the passengers to the transit hall of the former airport terminal and kept them under guard for days. In the meantime, the hijackers issued a demand for a ransom of 5 million dollars along with the release of 53 Palestinian and pro-Palestinian militants who were mostly imprisoned in Israel. The hijackers threatened to kill the hostages if the demands were not met.
As one can imagine this triggered some emergency meetings within the Israeli cabinet as well as other governments involved. At one point, the Israeli government did attempt to negotiate with the hijackers and were able to extend the hijackers deadline by 3 more days. Without much luck negotiating further, the government approved a rescue mission and deployed Sayeret Matkal.
Immediately they secured an airport in a friendly nation nearby, Kenya, and began plotting out the airport and their method of attack. They actually erected a partial replica of the airport terminal to assist the commandos in training for the mission. The Sayeret Matkal assault team was separated by several other units who ensured they arrived and could get out with the hostages.
As such, on July 3rd, Israeli forces landed at Entebbe via two Boeing 707 jets. Upon landing, they deployed several vehicles including a black Mercedes sedan that resembled President Amin’s and several Land Rovers that resembled his security team. The goal was to be able to use them to bypass security check points. The team then drove the vehicles to the terminal building in the same fashion Amin’s team would. However, the convoy was quickly stopped by Ugandan security teams who were aware Amin recently purchased a white Mercedes. The Israeli commandos then opened fire on the sentries which was against the plan as they believed the Ugandans at this time would not open fire. Fearing the hijackers would be alerted, the team moved quickly to the terminal.
Immediately upon breaching the terminal the commandos ran through shouting on a megaphone, “Stay down! Stay down! We are Israeli solders” in both Hebrew and English. Unfortunately, at least 2 hostages were shot and killed when they jumped up and were mistaken for hijackers. The commandos did locate one hijacker with the hostages and quickly eliminated him. They were then made aware the rest of the hijackers were in a main hallway of the airport so they deployed several hand grenades and then entered, shooting the remaining hijackers.
The Israeli commandos then ushered the hostages back to their Boeing aircraft while returning fire on Ugandan soldiers who were now shooting on them. Several Israelis and Ugandans were injured and some of the Ugandans later died. They also destroyed 11 Soviet-built MiG-17 and MiG-21 fighter planes of the Uganda Army Air Force as they feared they would attack the planes once they took off. Once the Israeli’s loaded everyone onto the plane, including a causality of their own, Commander Yonatan Netanyahu, they left the airport. The 7 hijackers were killed and 33 to 45 Ugandan soldiers were also killed. While some hostages did die, along with an Israeli commando, this mission was considered successful because 104 hostages made it home. It also laid the framework for modern anti-terrorist practices.
