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As weeks went, the one ending April 21 was a particularly violent one.
Beginning with news of a grim milestone – The death toll in Northern Ireland’s 4-years of violence reached 1,000 when gunfire from a speeding car killed a youth in the Roman Catholic Springfield area of Belfast, security officials said. The British army said the victim 18 to 20 years old was cut down near a traffic junction. It said soldiers heard shots fired and saw a British built minicar speed away immediately. The troops chased it in a jeep and while they were speeding after the escaping car they heard more shots. Then they found the body on the road a few yards ahead. The Army and police said the killing was the 1,000th they had recorded officially since August 1969, when Roman Catholic-Protestant communal unrest spilled over into open warfare. The Catholics support the outlawed Irish Republican army which seeks to overthrow British ruin and join Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland in the South. The Protestants, and their militant groups, say they will fight the IRA to the death. The 999th victim in the 4 years of violence involving the majority Protestants, minority Catholics and security forces had died during past week, and the killing was followed by a rash of fire bombings throughout the province against public and private installations. Earlier, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Londonderry called on the extremist Provisional Wing of the IRA to extend a local Londonderry cease-fire.
In the Middle-East; Fighting on the Golan Heights front exploded into a series of air battles when “large formations” of Israeli air-craft tried to penetrate Syrian air space, Syria reported. They were the first dogfights since the end of the October war. The battle on the Golan Heights and the bitter struggle for 9200-foot Mount Hermon had escalated earlier today when Israeli planes struck seven and a half to nine and a half miles north of the cease-fire line and the Syrian air force retaliated with raids on Israeli positions inside the salient it holds inside Syria.
And the FBI identified three members of the Symbionese Liberation Army Monday as participants in a bank robbery earlier in the day and said that the bandits were accompanied by Patricia Hearst. Miss Hearst was kidnaped by the SLA last Feb.4 but announced on a tape April 3 that she had chosen to join the revolutionary group that had abducted her, and would not return home. The FBI said an automatic camera took pictures of Monday morning’s holdup and permitted identification of five participants, four women and one man.
And with the continuing story in Northern Ireland and The Middle-East, that’s just a little of what happened the week ending April 21, 1974 as reported by CBS Radio’s The World This Week.
