S'13
07-03-2004, 08:48 PM
Site of Entebbe rescue operation to become museum
Uganda to mark “historic influence it had on country”, 28 years after IDF soldiers rescued 102 passengers who were hijacked aboard Air France flight to Israel.
Maariv News Service
Twenty-eight years after the heroic “Yehonatan Operation” (also known as the Entebbe operation), in which soldiers of the IDF’s elite Sayeret Matkal unit rescued Air France passengers who were held hostage at the international airport in Entebbe, Uganda, the site will become a museum – the Ugandan Aviation Authority announced on Saturday.
Authority spokesman Ignacius Igondora said that the passenger terminal in addition to the control tower are to be turned into a museum that will “perpetuate the historic influence the rescue operation had on the country”.
The commandos, headed by Yehonatan Netanyahu (brother of Finance Minster Benjamin Netanyahu) rescued 102 passengers, mostly Israelis, which were hijacked by Palestinian and German terrorists aboard an Air France flight to Israel. Netanyahu died during the raid and the operation was named after him.
Uganda's then-dictator, Idi Amin, had put the airport and his armed forces at the service of the hijackers, even as he claimed that he was trying to rescue the hostages. But Ugandan soldiers folded almost as soon as the well-planned and executed assault began.
A new airport was being built at the time of the raid. The Ugandan government immediately shut down the old one, which has since sat unused.
http://www.maarivintl.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=9330
Uganda to mark “historic influence it had on country”, 28 years after IDF soldiers rescued 102 passengers who were hijacked aboard Air France flight to Israel.
Maariv News Service
Twenty-eight years after the heroic “Yehonatan Operation” (also known as the Entebbe operation), in which soldiers of the IDF’s elite Sayeret Matkal unit rescued Air France passengers who were held hostage at the international airport in Entebbe, Uganda, the site will become a museum – the Ugandan Aviation Authority announced on Saturday.
Authority spokesman Ignacius Igondora said that the passenger terminal in addition to the control tower are to be turned into a museum that will “perpetuate the historic influence the rescue operation had on the country”.
The commandos, headed by Yehonatan Netanyahu (brother of Finance Minster Benjamin Netanyahu) rescued 102 passengers, mostly Israelis, which were hijacked by Palestinian and German terrorists aboard an Air France flight to Israel. Netanyahu died during the raid and the operation was named after him.
Uganda's then-dictator, Idi Amin, had put the airport and his armed forces at the service of the hijackers, even as he claimed that he was trying to rescue the hostages. But Ugandan soldiers folded almost as soon as the well-planned and executed assault began.
A new airport was being built at the time of the raid. The Ugandan government immediately shut down the old one, which has since sat unused.
http://www.maarivintl.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=9330