●The Communist Party announces the "Popular Guard" to defend southern villages

On 6 January 1970, days after Israeli forces occupied Kfar Kila and Hula and abducted a number of their inhabitants, the Lebanese Communist Party announced the founding of the "Popular Guard" as an armed wing to defend the border villages, in execution of a decision its political bureau had taken at the start of 1969; the party had had an undeclared militia since the events of 1958. The party was legalised in 1970 while Kamal Jumblatt was interior minister, and the Guard became one of the National Movement's most prominent militias in 1975–1976 with some five thousand fighters, headquartered in Zarif in Beirut and Hula in the South.