Retaliatory raid targets listed

Press, 14 December 1983, Page 10

Retaliatory raid targets listed

NZPA-AP Washington The United States Defence Department had compiled a list of targets in Lebanon to be bombed by American aircraft if there were any more terrorist attacks against American installations, said Pentagon sources yesterday. One official said, “we wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t know where the targets were.” The targets included Syrian-manned anti-aircraft missile sites and areas populated by Iranian-backed terrorist groups. The C.B.S. news network reported that it was unclear whether the list would be used in retaliation for the terrorist bombing of the American Embassy in Kuwait.

C.B.S. reported that Pentagon officials were convinced that none of the recent suicide bombings against American, French and Israeli positions in Lebanon could have occurred without the assistance of Syria. “The target list includes Syrian positions in Lebanon and is intended to convince Syria to stop its support for the terrorists,” said C.B.S. News.

It quoted officials as saying the man who could put an end to Syria’s support for anti-American terrorism was Colonel Rifaat Assad, the chief of Syrian Intelligence, and brother of the President, Mr Hafez Assad. The United States had previously asked Syria to stop a plot to homb the American Embassy in Kuwait, and the plot never materialised, said C.B.S.

A truck packed with explosives smashed through

the gates of the embassy on Monday and blew up, killing four foreign employees and wounding dozens of other people. The State Department in Washington put the casualties at four dead and 37 hurt. It said several Americans were wounded but that their injuries were minor. A chain of explosions also blasted a housing compound for Americans, the French Embassy, the international airport, and two other sites, in the Gulf State’s capital. There had been no injuries at the housing compound, said American officials, but the Kuwait Government said the other blasts had killed one person and injured 39. An organisation calling itself the “Islamic Jihad,” or “Islamic Holy War,” claimed responsibility for the attacks. The same group had said it set off the explosion that destroyed the American Embassy in Beirut in April, and claimed the bomb attacks on the Marine headquarters and French paratroop base in Beirut on October 23.

The style of the attack — a truck filled with explosives, running the gate — was similar to the October bombings that killed more than 250 American Marines and 58 French paratroopers. In Kuwait on Monday, the truck’s driver survived and was arrested with several other peole, said the Government.

Western diplomatic sources in Beirut said they believed that “Islamic Jihad” had Iranian connections and perhaps ties with Syria and the Soviet K.G.B.

In Lisbon, the American Secretary of State, Mr George Shultz, opening a new embassy, called the

bombings tragic and deplorable and said “peace has many enemies.” The embassy blast also caused extensive damage to the nearby Hilton Hotel, shattering all windows on one side.

An embassy official said that the driver had raced into the embassy compound and veered left to explode the truck outside the threestorey administration building-

Other diplomats said that the driver may have mistaken the block for the nearby main embassy buildings — the chancery, consular section, and United States Information Service offices.

But a State Department spokesman, Alan Romberg, said in Washington that everything had happened so fast that they may not have had time to react.

Mr Romberg said that Marines and Kuwait National Guardsmen guarding the embassy gate probably did not have time to shoot at the truck because “my understanding is that it careened around a corner and smashed though the gate.”

He said that there had been threats of an attack on the embassy before the bombing and that the embassy had taken some precautions. He said 20 of the 37 people injured were foreign employees. The other 17 were visitors. The six bomb attacks within 90 minutes shocked Kuwait and its Gulf allies. The Prime Minister and heir-apparent, Sheikh Saad al-Abdulla al-Sabah, promised tough measures against those responsible and a purge of “suspicious elements.”