Coastal Road Massacre

Date: March 11, 1978 • Location: Tel Aviv, Israel

After hijacking a bus north of Tel Aviv, Israel, members of the Palestine Liberation Organization faction Fatah engaged in a shootout with police, resulting in the deaths of 38 civilians and most of the perpetrators.

The coastal road massacre occurred on 11 March 1978, when Palestinian militants hijacked a bus on the Coastal Highway of Israel and murdered its occupants; 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children, were killed as a result of the attack while 76 more were wounded. The attack was planned by the influential Palestinian militant leader Khalil al-Wazir and carried out by Fatah, a Palestinian nationalist party co-founded by al-Wazir and Yasser Arafat in 1959. The initial plan of the militants was to seize a luxury hotel in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv and take tourists and foreign ambassadors hostage to exchange them for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody.