Following an assassination attempt on Israeli ambassador Shlomo Argov in London the IDF started an invasion of Lebanon on 6 June 1982, which heavily afflicted Tyre area once again. The first target of the invaders was Rashidieh. There were 15,356 registered Palestinian refugees in camp at the time, but John Bulloch, the Beirut-based correspondent of The Daily Telegraph at the time, estimated that it actually housed even more than 30,000. Most civilians fled into underground tunnels and bomb shelters, while Palestinian fighters tried to hold off the Israeli army. The militants, however, came under massive fire from air strikes, gunboats and artillery. Bulloch claimed that the IDF also dropped US-supplied cluster bombs and shells on Rashidieh.