Search on for kidnapped American

Press, 19 February 1988, Page 8

Search on for kidnapped American

NZPA-Reuter Tyre, Lebanon

Shi’ite Moslem Amal militiamen have launched a big search for the American chief of the United Nations truce observer group, the third United Nations official kidnapped in South Lebanon in two weeks. Marine Lieutenant Colonel William R. Higgins, aged 43, head of the Lebanon unit of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation (UNTSO), was grabbed from his car at gunpoint by three bearded militiamen near the town of Tyre on Wednesday. Pentagon and Lebanese security sources said Amal militiamen, in military fatigues and backed with tanks and jeepmounted recoilless cannons, set up dozens of roadblocks and searched cars and passers-by in the Tyre area shortly after the incident. Some of the checkpoints were manned also by a force of the United Nations Interim Force (UNIFIL), which has been deployed in South Lebanon since 1978.

No group has claimed responsibility for the latest kidnapping which brought to 28, including 10 Americans, the number of foreigners missing and believed kidnapped in Lebanon. At least 20 Americans have been kidnapped in the war-torn country since 1982 by pro-Iranian

Muslim extremists seeking changes in Western policy in the Middle-East. Three have been killed and seven freed. In Beirut, the Amal leader, Nabih Berri, held emergency meetings overnight with senior officers to discuss the first such reported abduction in Tyre, which is under the control of his militia.

“The kidnapping is not only a setback to Amal’s security but to south Lebanon’s security,” a senior Amal official told Reuters. “The UN force in the south is the only witness to Israel’s arbitrary measures against our people. The safety and security of these troops should be sacred,” he said. Asked if members of the pro-Iranian Hizbollah (Party of God) group, which wields wide influence in the area could be behind the abduction, the source said: “These people work underground there but we haven’t come to any conclusions yet.”

Hizbollah — believed to be holding some of the foreign hostages — opposes the presence of foreign troops in Lebanon. Timor Goksel, a spokesman for UNIFIL, said Mr Higgins was in his own car behind another vehicle containing three UNTSO officers, when he disappeared near the Rashidiyeh Palestinian refugee camp