Lod (Lydda) Israel Israel

Three Japanese Red Army gunmen arrive at the Lod Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel, via Air France Flight 132, on May 30, 1972.

They are dressed in business suits and carry what appeared to be violin cases.

As the three men pass the ticket counter area, they suddenly pull automatic weapons from their cases and begin to spray the crowd indiscriminately.

As they change magazines in their weapons, the men throw hand grenades into the mass of sprawling bodies.

One of the terrorists, Yasuyuki Yasuda, runs out of ammunition and is cut down by his companions.

A second terrorist, Tsuyoshi Okudaira, commits suicide by pulling the pin on a grenade and detonating it against his body.

The third terrorist, Kozo Okamoto, is captured while attempting to flee from the terminal.

Twenty-six people are killed in the massacre and seventy-eight are injured.

Sixteen of the dead are Puerto Ricans in Israel on a pilgrimage.

Okamoto is the younger brother of Takedia Okamoto, one of the JRA terrorists who had hijacked a Japan Airlines flight to North Korea in 1970.

After his capture, Okamoto addresses accusations that they had been drugged during the incident by saying: "The only drugs for us are Marxism-Leninism. The world of Che Guevara is the only stimulus we need." (The sole survivor of the Lod assassin team, Okamoto will be sentenced to life imprisonment in Israel.

He will be eventually released, however, as part of a 1983 prisoner exchange with Palestinian militant factions.)