Black Saturday (Lebanon)

Black Saturday (Arabic: السبت الأسود; French: Samedi noir) was the massacre of more than 200 Lebanese Muslims and Druze in Beirut by Christian Phalangists on Saturday 6 December 1975, during the early stages of the Lebanese Civil War.^[2][3][4] It set a precedent for later outbreaks of violence such as the Battle of the Hotels, the Karantina massacre and the Damour massacre.^[4]

Black Saturday Massacre
Part of the Lebanese Civil War
Location	Beirut, Lebanon
Coordinates	33°44′N 35°27′E
Date	6 December 1975
Target	Lebanese Muslims, Druze and Palestinians in Lebanon
Attack type	Massacre
Deaths	200+ killed[1]
Perpetrators	Kataeb Party
Motive	Anti-Palestinianism, revenge for the murder of a Phalangists son

The killings were led by Joseph Saade, a Phalangist whose son was killed in Fanar earlier that day along with 3 other young men while heading to a cinema in Brumana. The four young Christian men were found dead with axes and gunshots wounds on the Fanar road in Lebanon. Saade's first son was also murdered by Palestinian gunmen while participating in a rally paper in Bekaa earlier in 1975. ^[5] The massacre accelerated the rapidly escalating civil war.^[2]

References

1. Lebanese Civil War 6 December 1975 Saturday. Website liberty05. Retrieved 17 July 2017.
2. Tamimova, May (2018). "The Black Saturday Massacre of 1975: the discomfort of assembling the Lebanese civil war narrative". Contemporary Levant. 3 (2): 123–136. doi:10.1080/20581831.2018.1531531. S2CID 165385219.
3. "Lebanon - The Early Stages of Combat". www.country-data.com. Retrieved 24 February 2021.
4. May Tamimova (2018) The Black Saturday Massacre of 1975: the discomfort of assembling the Lebanese civil war narrative, Contemporary Levant, 3:2, 123-136, DOI: 10.1080/20581831.2018.1531531
5. Venter, Al J. (19 October 2010). Barrel of a Gun: A War Correspondent's Misspent Moments in Combat. Casemate. ISBN 978-1-61200-032-9.