X-Nico

4 unusual facts about Multinational Force and Observers


Francis J. Ricciardone, Jr.

He has served in two multinational military deployments: as chief of the Civilian Observer Unit of the Multinational Force and Observers in Egypt's Sinai Desert, and as political advisor to the U.S. and Turkish commanding generals of Operation Provide Comfort, based in Turkey and operating in Iraq.

Multinational Force and Observers

On December 12, 1985, a chartered Arrow Air DC-8 with 248 returning members of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division and eight flight crew crashed into the cold, damp landscape at the end of runway 22 at Gander International Airport in Gander, Newfoundland, with no survivors.

The 15 civilian observers employed by the MFO used to wear highly visible orange coveralls while carrying out their treaty verification duties until the arrival of U.S. Foreign Service Observer Harry Holland in 2002, when he affected a change to bright orange shirt worn with khaki trousers, now used on all ground verification missions.

MFO Director-General Leamon Hunt was assassinated in Rome, Italy, while sitting in his chauffeur-driven armored car, outside the gates of his private residence.


Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions

The LARF was also allegedly behind the assassination of US citizen Leamon Hunt, the director of the multinational observer force in the Sinai in February 1984 in Rome, as well as a failed attempt on the US Consul-General in Strasbourg, Robert Homme, and the kidnapping late that year of the director of the French Cultural Center in Beirut, Gilles Peyroles.

No. 5 Squadron RAAF

In the mid-1970s and mid-1980s, the squadron contributed Iroquois to United Nations missions to Egypt, firstly to Ismailia with the United Nations Emergency Force and then later to the Sinai as part of the Multinational Force and Observers.


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