TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/86/86capts.18

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                                                                                January 6, 1986

TERRORISM

Ten Minutes of Horror


In well-timed attacks, gunmen bring carnage to Rome and Vienna
airports


Long lines of holiday travelers pushing heavily laden baggage
carts were waiting in the main departure lounge of Rome's
Leonardo da Vinci Airport. Hardly anyone paid much attention
to four dark-complexioned young men who mingled with the crowd.
One wore an expensive gray suit and camel's hair topcoat. Two
were in blue jeans and jackets, and had pulled scarves partly
over their faces. The fourth sported a green beret. They were
not traveling light: they carried 13 hand grenades and four
AK-47 automatic rifles.

At 9:03 a.m., one of the men threw a grenade toward a nearby
espresso bar and hamburger counter, where General Donato
Miranda Acosta, the military attache at the Mexican embassy in
Rome, was sipping coffee with his secretary, Genoveva Jaime
Cisneros, who was there to see him and his family off on a
vacation trip to Frankfurt. Miranda Acosta and Cisneros were
probably the first to be killed. Then the attackers raked the
820-ft.-long terminal with bullets, hitting people waiting for
an El Al flight and others at nearby TWA and Pan Am counters.
The men jumped up and down in a frenzy, screaming as they
fired, and security guards shot back. "People were falling all
over the place," recalled Anna Ironmetta, who operates a gift
shop near the coffee bar. "It seemed to go on forever." Five
minutes later, the carnage was over. The toll: 15 people dead,
including three of the terrorists, and 74 wounded.

At about the time that the shooting stopped at Leonardo da
Vinci, three men in dirty pants and combat jackets ran up the
steps to the second-floor departure area at Vienna's Schwechat
Airport. They opened fire with AK-47s. Passengers waiting to
check in for El Al Flight 364 to Tel Aviv threw themselves on
the floor or leaped over ticket counters in panic. Police and
El Al security guards returned the fire, but the terrorists
managed to get within 30 ft. of the counter. They rolled three
had grenades across the floor like bowling balls toward their
victims.

Eckehard Kaerner, 50, an Austrian high school teacher headed
for some vacation study in Israel, died of multiple wounds under
a brightly lit Christmas tree near the El Al counter.
"Suddenly there was this terrible noise, not single shots but
real explosions," said a Viennese man who jumped behind a
counter. "Three or four meters to my left, three people had
fallen to the ground. There was a small child, all bloodied,
its mother, who was also wounded, and  man who lay bleeding and
seemed dead. To my right, another man had fallen and did not
budge anymore."

Within two minutes after the shooting began, the gunmen escaped
down a flight of stairs and headed for an employee garage,
where one of them pulled a knife on an airport official and
commandeered his Mercedes-Benz. In a running gun battle with
police, the terrorists tossed a grenade at a pursuing patrol car
(it missed), and police bullets flattened a tire and pierced the
gas tank of the Mercedes. Just two miles from the airport, the
killers were stopped. The toll: three dead, including one of
the terrorists, and 47 wounded.

In just ten terror-filled minutes last Friday, the civilized
world was thus given yet another reminder of its vulnerability
at the hands of suicidal terrorists, of the lethal instability
that emanates from the Middle East and, finally, of life's
terrifying fragility. Responsibility for the attacks was
claimed by a dissident Palestine Liberation Organization
splinter group. The assaults touched off widespread debate
about possible motives, about the likelihood of Israeli
retaliation, and about whether the massacres could have been
prevented in the first place.

Interpol, the Paris-based anticrime organization, had warned
early in December that terrorists, "probably of Arab origin,"
might strike an airport during the Christmas holidays.
Officials in a few West European countries had already taken
precautions. At Rome's airport, a balcony overlooking the
ticket counters had been closed. Both the Charles de Gaulle and
Orly airports outside Paris were being watch by extra squads of
national police. Undercover detectives drifted among the crowds
near check-in counters at London's Heathrow. Every taxiing El
Al airliner at major European airports was trailed by armored
cars carrying police with machine guns. Screening measures were
in effect last week at Rome and Vienna, but to little avail:
the massacres occurred well away from the passenger gates.

At Leonard da Vinci, Daniela Simpson was outside the terminal
walking the family dog while her husband Victor, the Associated
Press editor in Rome, was checking bags and obtaining boarding
passes for the couple and their two children for a TWA flight
to New York. "Suddenly there was a shattering noise . . . and
two distinct machine-gun bursts," recalled Mrs.Simpson, who
reports in Rome as a TIME stringer. "And then silence. I
rushed in to screams and cries, and saw my husband dripping
blood from his hand and my son on the floor, shot in the
stomach. They were O.K., but I lost my daughter." Simpson had
dropped on top of his two children when the firing began.
Michael, 9, survived, but Natasha, 11, was dead on arrival at
a local hospital.

Also killed in the terminal was John Buonocore, 20, an exchange
student from Pennsylvania's Dickinson College, who was about to
return from a semester's study in Rome. Three other Americans
failed to survive their airport wounds and died in hospitals.
They were Don Maland, 30, a native New Yorker who had been
working for Ford Aerospace in Cairo; Frederick Gage, 29, a
member of the board of Capital Times Co. in Madison, Wis., and
Elena Tomarello, 67, a returning vacationer from North Naples,
Fla.

As the firing subsided, one of the terrorists, fatally wounded
by security officers, flashed a V-for-victory sign with his
fingers then died. Another of the killers dropped to the floor
and pretended to be a victim. When the shooting stopped
completely, he began to crawl slowly away. Then he broke into
a run. "Catch him, catch him!" several passengers yelled. A
policeman overtook him and stopped him with a punch to the jaw.

While El Al appeared to be the target of both attacks, the
terrorists in Rome evidently did not much care whom they hit.
In additional to the five Americans, the victims included at
least three Greeks, two Mexicans, one Algerian and two men
whose nationalities were not know.

The terrorists in Rome carried no identity papers. But police
determined that one of the slain gunmen was only 15 years old.
The lone survivor, shot in the arm and shoulder, was too
seriously wounded to be thoroughly questioned. He gave his name
as Mohammed Sharam, 19, claimed to have been born in Lebanon's
Shatilea camp, and declared, "I am a Palestine fighter." Blood
tests showed that he had taken amphetamines, and police believed
that some of the attackers had been high on the drug.
Investigators traced a currency-exchange receipt from a Rome
bank in the possession of one of the attackers and discovered,
as Interpol had predicted, that he had been traveling on a
Moroccan passport.

A note was found on one of the Rome assailants. Written in
Arabic and addressed to "Zionists," it said in part: "As you
have violated our land, our honor, our people, we in exchange
will violate everything, even your children, to make you feel
the sadness of our children. The tears we have shed will be
exchanged for blood. The war started from this moment." It was
signed, "The martyrs of Palestine."

None of the three Vienna attackers carried identification
either. But Austrian police were able to determine their names
and ages: Abdel Aziz Merzoughi, 25; Ben Ahmed Chaoval, 25; and
Mongi Ben Abdollah Saadqoui, 26. One of the two who were
captured replied to questions in Arabic and claimed that he came
from Lebanon. Wounded in the abdomen, he is expected to survive.
The other was struck in the thorax and was in a coma. Austrian
police said that all three were Arabs.

Hours after the assaults, a man speaking in Arabic-accented
Spanish called a radio station in Malaga, Spain, and claimed
that both attacks had been carried out by the "Abu Nidal
organization." Officials in Italy, Austria, Israel and U.S. all
took the claim seriously. Abu Nidal is the code name used by
Sabry Khalil Bana, 45, who quit Yasser Arafat's Palestine
Liberation Organization in 1973, contending that Arafat had
softened his opposition to Israel. Abu Nidal, in turn, was
condemned to death by the P.L.O. Interviewed by Arab reporters
recently in LIbya, where he reportedly established a
headquarters a few months ago for his Fatah Revolutionary
Council, Abu Nidal has also been a frequent visitor to Iraq and
Syria.

Described by a high Bonn official as "a thug and an
international gangster and pirate," Abu Nidal reportedly
operates less for ideology than to gain notoriety and money from
others who hire his services. After leaving Arafat, he led his
council on numerous terrorist attacks. He is believed to have
organized assaults on synagogues in Rome, Paris and Vienna. His
council has also been linked to the 1982 shooting in London of
Israeli Ambassador Shlomo Argov, an incident that touched off
Israel's invasion of Lebanon that year; the 1983 murder in
Lisbon of Issam Sartawi, a top Arafat aide; and the hijacking
last November of an Egypt Air jetliner to Malta, where 60 people
died.

The P.L.O. quickly denied that it had anything to do with last
week's airport assaults. Arafat in November denounced
terrorist activities outside Israeli-occupied territory. But
in Tel Aviv, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin claimed that the
newest attacks showed that "the Palestinian terrorist
organizations are trying to reach us and harm us wherever they
can." Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesman Avi Pazner warned that
"Israel will continue its struggle against terrorism in every
place ad at any time that it sees fit."

There was little doubt that Israel would strike back. The only
real questions were how soon and against what targets. "You bet
the Israelis are going to retaliate," observed a top-ranking
U.S. intelligence official. "It was an attack aimed against
them, and they will not let this go by." One possible target
is Abu Nidal's main base at Tripoli, Libya. He is also reported
to have a base on the outskirts of Damascus. A retaliatory raid
there would seriously challenge the Syrian air force.

Israel last week accused Syria's President Haffez Assad of
replacing Soviet SA-6 and SA-8 antiaircraft missiles in
Lebanon. Syria had deployed such weapons there in 1981, only to
have them destroyed by the Israelis during their 1982 invasion.
The redeployment into Lebanon's Bekaa Valley was made late in
November after Israeli war planes had shot down two Syrian jets
over Syria. An Israeli army spokesmen disclosed the missile
move publicly on Dec. 15. Other Israeli officials contended
that the U.S. had secretly persuaded Assad to withdraw them.
Assad did so but, showing his muscle in the region, abruptly
sent the weapons back into the Bekaa just two days later. That
move was announced by Peres. The impasse led Defense Minister
Rabin to declare ominously, "Israel will reserve to itself the
ways, the means, and the time to cope with this problem."
Israel thus seemed poised to deal with both the missiles and the
terrorist attacks perhaps simultaneously.

Another coincidence complicated the retaliation possibilities.
Assad had invited Jordan's King Hussein to meet with him in
Damascus early this week, the first such get-together in six
years. The two have been feuding since 1980, partly over the
Camp David peace plan. Some Western diplomats believe that
Hussein was willing to go to Damascus to try to preserve his
role in the process, which has been stalled by Arafat's refusal
to recognize Israel. By meeting with Assad, who has ties with
anti-Arafat P.L.O. dissidents, Hussein may hope to prod Arafat
into a compromise. Assad, however, seems determined to block
any agreement among Jordan, Israel and the Palestinians. The
Israelis, clearly nervous about the meeting, had to weigh the
impact that any retaliatory strike into Lebanon or Syria might
have on the two leaders. The consequences could be
unpredictable and serious, but after last week's terror, no one
could rule out such a strike.

The airport terrorism was especially unsettling to Italy and
Austria, which have developed relatively good relations with
the P.L.O. in recent years. In addition, the tactic of shooting
up an airport area that anyone can enter without going through
personal and baggage screening troubled officials who supervise
airport security. "We can move passenger check-ins further away
from airports," said Vienna's Lord Mayor Helmut Zilk. "But we
can't keep them secret."

Even more worrisome was the possibility that the latest
assaults will touch off additional violence. As Michael
Simpson, 9, was carried into a Rome hospital last week in a
state of near shock, he kept repeating, "It will never end. It
will never end." He was, of course, referring to the horrible
ordeal he had just endured. But he could just as easily have
been describing the inevitable cycle of terror and retaliation
that has come to characterize politics in the Middle East.


By Ed Magnuson. Reported by Walter Galling/Rome and Gertraud
Lessing/Vienna.