1975 Beirut bus massacre
The 1975 Beirut bus massacre (), also known as the Ain el-Rammaneh incident and the "Black Sunday", was the collective name given to a short series of armed clashes involving Phalangist and Palestinian elements in the streets of central Beirut, which is commonly presented as the spark that set off the Lebanese Civil War in the mid-1970s. Background Early in the morning of April 13, 1975, outside the Church of Notre Dame de la Delivrance at the predominantly Maronite inhabited district of Ain el-Rammaneh in East Beirut, an altercation occurred between half a dozen armed Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) guerrillas (Arabic: Fedaiyyin) on a passing vehicle performing the customary wavering and firing their automatic rifles into the air (Arabic: Baroud) and a squad of uniformed militiamen belonging to the Phalangist Party's Kataeb Regulatory Forces (KRF) militia, who were diverting the traffic at the front of the newly consecrated church where a family baptism was taking place. As the rowdy Palestinians refused to be diverted from their route, the nervous Phalangists tried to halt their progress by force and a scuffle quickly ensued, which resulted in the death of the PLO driver of the vehicle after being accidentally shot. This would