Shot envoy criticalhospital

Press, 5 June 1982, Page 1

Shot envoy criticalhospital

NZPA-Reuter London Israel’s Ambassador to Britain, shot through the head by a gunman outside a London hotel, was still in a critical condition yesterday after 2‘a-hour surgery, said hospital officials. The envoy, Mr Shlomo Argov, aged 52, was hit by a burst of sub-machine gun fire as he left the Dorchester Hotel in Park Lane late on Thursday evening after a dinner. A single bullet pierced the right side of the skull, passed through the brain, and emerged through the left side, said officials at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases which specialises in neurology. A surgeon had removed a clot'and a certain amount of fragmented bone which had penetrated the brain and closed the two wounds, they said. “The Ambassador lost a substantial amount of blood and required a transfusion,” the hospital said. "The Ambassador’s condition remains critical.” The police said the gunman was shot by a police bodyguard. He is in the in-tensive-care unit of London’s Westminster Hospital. The police said they were questioning two other men detained in South London, several kilometres from the hotel after their car was seen near the shooting. A weapon had been recovered. The three men detained by the police after the shooting of Mr Argov are believed to be Palestinians travelling on false passports. The police seized three passports which gave the nationality of two of the men as Jordanian and the other as Iraqi. A spokesman for the P.L.O. yesterday denied responsibility for the shooting of Mr Argov, “The P.L.O. has nothing to do with the assassination al-, tempt and we in the P.L.O. ? do not resort to such methods.” the .spokesman said. The shooting of Mr Argov was the latest in a number of killings and attempts on the lives of prominent Middle East , figures in London in recent years. In September, 1977, Abdul- ; lah Al-Hajari, the Prime Minister of North Yemen, his wife, Fatima, and Abdullah Ali Al-Hammini, Minister at the Yemeni Embassy, were shot dead outside a London hotel. In January, 1978, Said Hammani, the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s representative in Britain, was killed at his London office. In,July, 1978, General Abr dul Razzakal-Naif, a former Iraqi Prime Minister, was shot outside his London hotel.

He died later in hospital. It was the second attempt on his life in London. Eighteen days later, Taha Ahmed Al-Dawood, Iraqi Ambassador to Britain, escaped injury when a grenade was tossed under his car outside his embassy. Two people were injured. Just over two years ago Mammud Nafa, a Libyan lawyer, was shot dead by two men in 4he fashionable Kensington district. ; The Palestine Liberation Organisation put its guerrilla forces throughout Lebanon on maximum alert yesterday in anticipation of a , big Israeli attack after the attempted assassination of Mr Argov, P.L.O. sources said. The alert order was sent out soon after Israel’s Foreign Minister, Mr Yitzhak Shamir, blamed the assassination attempt on "Arab terrorists,” the sources, who did not want to be named, said. None of the P.L.O.’s, eight main member groups has claimed responsibility for the London shooting, and Mr Shamir did not mention the P.L.O. or any of its member groups by name in his statement in Jerusalem. Officials in Jerusalem were quoted as saying the London attack signalled a new wave of terrorist actions against Israeli diplomats abroad. Mr Argov, who has been Israeli Ambassador to Britain since" September 6, 1979, was said to have been a personel appointment of the Israeli Prime Minister (Mr Begin). ... . Mr. Argov is aged 52. He is and has a son and two daughters. Mr Argov was shot only a week after vigorously denying that Israel was supplying arms to Argentina' for use in the Falklands war. This week’s edition of the Australian “Jewish' Times” reports on its front page that Mr Argov made the denial at a Jewish community function in London last week.