Arab envoys deplore synagogue attack

Press, 13 October 1982, Page 8

Arab envoys deplore synagogue attack

NZPA-Reuter Rome Arab ambassadors to Italy have issued a statement deploring last week-end’s attack on a Rome synagogue in which a small boy was killed and ,34 people were injured. The Council of Arab Ambassadors condemned “the act of terrorism committed against the Jewish synagogue, which caused victims among innocent civilians as they performed their religious duties." The ambassadors offered’ condolences for the family of the two-year-old boy who died in the attack and sympathy for the injured and their families.

Surgeons operated yesterday on the four-year-old brother of the dead child to

remove grenade fragments from his head, and said his condition was still critical.

The police said that the five men who took part in the attack were almost certainly foreigners. Detectives were comparing Identikit pictures of two of them with photographs issued by the French police after a similar attack in Paris earlier this year.

The police said that they believed the assailants were linked to a Palestinian splinter group opposed to the Palestine Liberation Organisation and that the weapons came from the Soviet Union and Poland.

Rome’s Communist Mayor, Mr Ugo Vetere, denounced anti-Semitism in a speech at an open-air rally called by Italy's trade unions to pro-

test against the attack, but affirmed his right to criticise Israeli Government policies in the Middle East.

Jewish community leaders declined an invitation to attend the rally, which followed a two-hour strike in the city held as a mark of solidarity with the victims of the attack.

But members of Rome's Jewish community said there was widespread resentment among their leaders that the unions had helped create a climate in which an antiSemitic outrage was possible because of their hard line against Israel's role in Lebanon.

Rome’s Jews also accused the Italian authorities of being partly responsible for the bombing.