Black Saturday (Arabic: السبت الأسود; ) 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. 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. The massacre accelerated the rapidly escalating civil war.