1975 Beirut bus massacre
The 1975 Beirut bus massacre (Arabic: مجزرة بوسطة عين الرمانة ,مجزرة عين الرمانة), also known as the Ain el-Rammaneh incident and 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) in 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.