F.B.L combs bomb debris

Press, 10 November 1983, Page 8

F.B.L combs bomb debris

NZPA Washington Federal Bureau of Investigation agents combed through debris yesterday in the wake of a bomb blast that ripped through a hallway in the United States Senate and severely damaged a meeting room near the chamber. Officials said that the device had been triggered by a wrist-watch. The bombing touched off a rash of bomb threats to the Capitol and surrounding grounds throughout the day.

The “armed resistance unit,” a group claiming responsibility for the bombing, said in a “communique” that “we attacked the United States Government to retaliate against imper-

ialist aggression that has sent the Marines, the C.I.A. and the Army to invade sovereign nations, to trample and lay waste to the lives and rights of the peoples of Grenada, Lebanon, El Salvador, and Nicaragua . . .” A shaken Senate convened yesterday despite piles of rubble outside the chamber doors caused by the explosion. The Senate Majority Leader, Senator Howard Baker (Rep., Tennessee) told colleagues that had the Senate been in session there surely would have been grave injury . . . “and, perhaps, loss of life to senators and staff.”