Today, August 12, marks the 45th anniversary of Tel Al-Zaatar massacre, which is considered as genocide that affected thousands of Lebanon’s Palestinians during the civil war. 

The biggest part of the massacre occurred during the period from August 12 to14 in 1976 in Tal Al-Zaatar camp established in 1949, which lies in the northeast of Beirut. 

Perpetrators of the massacre

The Syrian forces and Christian Right-wing militias carried out the massacre. 

The victims of the massacre were 4280, the majority was civilians. Some of them were killed in the period between 12-14 of August, while the other died during the seige of the camp. 

The indications of the massacre of Tel Al-Zaatar camp started in 1976 when conflicts arose between the Christian militias and the Palestinian Brigades. 

Meantime, religious confrontations and battles occured between the two sides, and thousand of Muslim Lebanese refuged to Tel Al-Zaatar camp and joined the Palestinians. 

At the beginnings of July of 1976, the Syrian forces and Lebanese militias started the seige of the camp and cut the water, electricity and food.

The suffocating siege lasted for 52 days. In that time, the camp was bombed with 55.000 rockets and relief commissions were prevented from entering the camp. 

When the occupying forces could kill the fighters in the camp, they stormed on August 12, 1976 and committed a horrible massacre against the civilians in which they shot live bullets towards the chest of women, men, elderly people and pregnant bellies. 

After the massacre committed, the bulldozers started to demolish the camp and the survivors started to look for shelters and camps in Palestine and Lebanon. 

The massacre of Tel Al-Zaatar camp is one of the worst pages of the Lebanese civil war which erupted in 1975, and lasted for 15 days.

The human rights organizations condemned the escape of the massacres’ perpetrators from punishment, and said that “the corpses of the massacre’s martyrs are buried in differed spots used by people, which violates the victims’ dignity.”

They also called on all parties, including the Lebanese government, to reopen the file, disclose the destiny of the missing people and inform the families of the places where their sons were buried.