Pro-Iranian militants vow to avenge deaths

Press, 4 August 1987, Page 6

Pro-Iranian militants vow to avenge deaths

NZPA-Reuter Beirut Unidentified gunmen threw dynamite at the deserted Saudi Arabian Embassy in Muslim west Beirut last night, causing damage but no casualties. Residents said they saw smoke rise above the area.

The incident occurred amid widening protests over last Friday’s bloodshed in Islam’s holiest city, Mecca, where Saudi Arabia said 402 people, including 275 Iranians, had died. Iranian-backed militants in Lebanon blamed Saudi Arabia and the United States for the carnage and have threatened to avenge the deaths. Saudi Arabia says the clashes were started by Iranian demonstrators.

Saudi Arabia closed its Beirut Embassy in 1984 after street battles between Muslim militias and the Lebanese Army and the abduction of its Consul by the pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad (holy war) organisation, which holds two American and four French hostages. Islamic Jihad yesterday issued a statement along with a black and white photograph of one United States captive, Terry Anderson, threatening reprisals against Saudi Arabia’s ruling family. "We consider the Saud family has become in direct confrontation with the Muslims and will not escape this massacre without punishment,” a typewritten statement said.

Iran yesterday stepped up threats against United States forces in the Gulf, saying it would attack to avenge the deaths of the pilgrims. A senior Iranian leader, addressing huge crowds in Teheran on a “day of hatred against the United States,” vowed vengeance. Teheran said it had launched also a new offensive in its seven-year-old war against Iraq, killing more than 3500 enemy soldiers. It announced that Iranian revolutionary guards would stage manoeuvres in and around the Gulf this week. Bagdad’s daily war communique made no mention of fighting on the Gulf war central front. Iran’s Deputy Foreign

Minister, Ali Mohammad Besherati, said a bomb had been placed on a United States naval helicopter that crashed in the Gulf last week. One man was killed and three seamen are still missing as a result of the crash, in which the Sea King helicopter plunged into the water while trying to land on the United States command ship LaSalle. The French Prime Minister, Mr Jacques Chirac, reaffirmed France’s call for free shipping in the Gulf and said a French task force steaming toward the region was “essentially a dissuasive force ... but if our interests are attacked, it goes without saying we will respond.”