GUNMEN RAID U.K. EMBASSY

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31178, 30 September 1966, Page 13

GUNMEN RAID U.K. EMBASSY

Plan To Kidnap Duke Reported (N.Z.P.A Reuter—Copyright) BUENOS AIRES, Sept. 29. Two carloads of gunmen sprayed the British Embassy in Buenos Aires with bullets last night, as Argentine Nationalists pressed long-standing claims to the Falkland Islands.

One newspaper report said extremists planned to kidnap the Duke of Edinburgh, who was inside the building at the time and exchange him for the British-ruled islands 300 miles off the tip of the continent.

British officials said they had no information on the report.

The attack on the Embassy was made as Prince Philip prepared for a dinner with

Commonwealth diplomats in Buenos Aires for the 105th anniversary of Argentine independence.

The gunmen sprayed the building with automatic fire and caused some damage to the ground floor. There were no casualties.

The Argentine federal police chief, General Mario Fonseca, ordered extra police guards on important points in the city after conferring with President Juan Carlos Ongania. Authorities in the Falkland Islands are trying to disarm a 20-strong group of Argentine Nationalists who invaded the islands in a hi-jacked airliner.

The group has been contained in the vicinity of Port Stanley Racecourse, where the plane landed. The situation is under control.

On landing the Nationalists, with rifles, cordoned off the plane—which was carrying 26

other passengers and a crew flags and distributed a proclamation saying they had arrived to settle ambiguity over the colony’s status. Rear Admiral Jose Maria Guzman, of Tierra Del Fuego and Argentina’s Southern Territories—which theoretically includes the Falkland Islands—was a passenger on the airliner There was no indication that he knew of the hi-jack plan in advance.