Black Saturday (Lebanon)

{{Short description|1975 massacre during the Lebanese Civil War}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2021}}

{{Infobox civilian attack

| title = Black Saturday Massacre

| image =

| caption =

| partof = the Lebanese Civil War

| location = Beirut, Lebanon

| target = Lebanese Muslims, Druze and Palestinians in Lebanon

| coordinates = {{Coord|33|44||N|35|27||E|display=inline,title}}

| date = 6 December 1975

| time =

| timezone =

| type = Massacre

| fatalities = 200+ killed{{usurped|1=[https://archive.today/20120906054244/http://www.liberty05.com/civilwar/civil.html Lebanese Civil War 6 December 1975 Saturday]}}. Website liberty05. Retrieved 17 July 2017.

| injuries =

| perps = {{flagicon image|Flag of Kataeb Party.svg}} Kataeb Party

| motive = Anti-Palestinianism, revenge for the murder of a Phalangists son

}}

{{Campaignbox Lebanese Civil War}}

Black Saturday (Arabic: السبت الأسود; {{langx|fr|Samedi noir}}) was the massacre of more than 200 Lebanese Muslims and Druze in Beirut by Christian Phalangists on Saturday 6 December 1975, during the early stages of the Lebanese Civil War.{{Cite web|title=Lebanon - The Early Stages of Combat|url=http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-8065.html|access-date=2021-02-24|website=www.country-data.com}}May Tamimova (2018) The Black Saturday Massacre of 1975: the discomfort of assembling the Lebanese civil war narrative, Contemporary Levant, 3:2, 123-136, DOI: 10.1080/20581831.2018.1531531 It set a precedent for later outbreaks of violence such as the Battle of the Hotels, the Karantina massacre and the Damour massacre.

The killings were led by Joseph Saade, a Phalangist whose son was killed in Fanar earlier that day along with three other young men while heading to a cinema in Brumana. The four young Christian men were found dead with axes and gunshots wounds on the Fanar road in Lebanon. Saade's first son was also murdered by Palestinian gunmen while participating in a rally paper in Bekaa earlier in 1975. {{Cite book|last=Venter|first=Al J.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eitEPDV54MsC&pg=PA37|title=Barrel of a Gun: A War Correspondent's Misspent Moments in Combat|date=2010-10-19|publisher=Casemate|isbn=978-1-61200-032-9|language=en}} The massacre accelerated the rapidly escalating civil war.{{Cite journal|last=Tamimova|first=May|date=2018|title=The Black Saturday Massacre of 1975: the discomfort of assembling the Lebanese civil war narrative|journal=Contemporary Levant|volume=3|issue=2|pages=123–136|doi=10.1080/20581831.2018.1531531|s2cid=165385219 }}