Samu incident

Operation Shredder
Part of the Reprisal Operations
Date13 November 1966 (1966-11-13)
Location
Es Samu, Jordanian West Bank
Result Build-up to Six-Day War
Belligerents
 Israel  Jordan
Commanders and leaders
Strength
  • 400 troops
  • 40 half-tracks
  • 10 tanks
  • 4 fighter jets
  • 100 troops
  • 20 convoy vehicles
  • 8 fighter jets
Casualties and losses
  • 1 killed
  • 10 wounded
  • 1 fighter jet damaged
  • 16 killed
  • 54 wounded
  • 15 vehicles destroyed
  • 1 fighter jet destroyed
3 civilians killed, 96 wounded

The Samu incident or Battle of Samu was a large cross-border assault on 13 November 1966 by Israeli military on the Jordanian-controlled West Bank village of Samu in response to an al-Fatah land mine attack two days earlier near the West Bank border, which killed three Israeli soldiers on a border patrol. It purportedly originated from Jordanian territory. It was the largest Israeli military operation since the 1956 Suez Crisis and is considered to have been a contributing factor to the outbreak of the Six-Day War in 1967.[1] Since 1965 Jordan had an active campaign to curb Fatah sabotage activities.[2] The handling of the incident was widely criticised in Israeli political and military circles, and the United Nations responded with United Nations Security Council Resolution 228, censuring Israel for "violating the United Nations Charter and the General Armistice Agreement."

  1. ^ Ben-Yehûdā, Ḥemdā and Sandler, Shmuel (2002). The Arab-Israeli Conflict Transformed: Fifty Years of Interstate and Ethnic Crises. SUNY Press. ISBN 0-7914-5245-X, p. 34.
  2. ^ Moshe Shemesh (2008) Arab Politics, Palestinian Nationalism and the Six Day War. Sussex Academic Press. ISBN 978-1-84519-188-7 (h/c). pp 110–114