Rome attack debated

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33413, 20 December 1973, Page 1

Rome attack debated

(N.Z. P. A. -Reuter—Copyright)

ROME, December 18.

Uproar broke out in the Italian Parliament today as Right-wing and Christian Democrat members fought a slanging match over the Government’s handling of yesterday’s Arab guerrilla attack at Rome Airport.

The Minister of the Interior (Mr Emilio Taviana) said that the attack, which left 31 persons dead, might have been carried out by the Palestinian guerrilla group responsible for last year’s massacre at Tel Aviv’s Lydda Airport.

The Popular Front for the liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the Lydda attack, in which 27 persons were killed and 80 injured by a Japanese suicide squad of three. At one stage of the debate. representatives of the neo-Fascist Italian Socialist movement (M. 5.1. made as if to get to grips with Christian Democrat members but were held back by ushers. The incident follow’ed a virulent exchange, with the Rightists jeering “shame,” "resign.” and "crocodile tears” as Mr Taviani said that the police had done all they could under the circumstances. They were answered with shouts of “buffoons,” and “out, out, out” from the Christian Democrats, the dominant party in the ruling Italian coalition

Mr Taviani defer ’?d the Government against charges that security had been slack at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport There was, he said, no foolproof way of preventing such kinds of attacks by determined men: “But we will further tighten up our already efficient security,” he said.

Mr Taviani denied reports that the police on duty at the airport had no ammunition for their revolvers and sub-machine-guns. They had been unable to open fire because the guerrillas had produced automatic weapons from their hand luggage as they reached the bank of metal detectors consituting the last check before embarkation.