Gunmen Kidnap Two More Foreign Officials in Lebanon : Frenchman, Briton Bring Total to Nine

Gunmen today abducted the director of France’s cultural institute from his home in the northern port of Tripoli and kidnaped a British U.N. official near the Beirut airport, officials said.

The two became the eighth and ninth foreigners kidnaped this month in mostly Muslim areas of Lebanon.

A police source in Tripoli, 42 miles north of Beirut, said a group of armed men stormed the home of the Frenchman, Gilles Sidney Peyrolles, in the port city shortly after midnight, singled him out from among his roommates and took him to an unidentified destination.

Alec Collett, on a three-month assignment as a consultant for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees, was kidnaped in a vehicle marked with a U.N. insignia along with his driver, who was later released, U.N. spokesman Francois Giuliani said.

Car Pulled Over

Gunmen in a BMW car followed the two and forced them to stop their car shortly after they passed an Amal militia checkpoint near the Beirut airport, officials said.

Collett, a correspondent for the Botswana Guardian and the Times of Zambia at U.N. headquarters in New York, arrived in Beirut last month.

The spokesman said it was the first case of a U.N. official being kidnaped in Lebanon. No group claimed responsibility.

An Islamic extremist group called the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions claimed responsibility for abducting Peyrolles in a communique delivered to a Western news agency. It said it sought freedom within 48 hours for comrades held by French authorities.

The statement said the group was using “the most merciful forms of passive retaliation,” but warned “our future retaliation will be more severe and will bring catastrophe to inhabitants of Paris and Rome.”

Six Attacks Claimed

The Revolutionary Factions group has claimed responsibility for six attacks against American and Israeli diplomats in France since 1981. French investigators have said they believe its members are Christians from a single village in northern Lebanon.

Police said an investigation was under way but there was no word on Peyrolles’ whereabouts.

A spokesman at the French Embassy in Beirut declined to confirm that Peyrolles had been abducted.

Peyrolles’ disappearance coincided with the arrival in Beirut on Sunday of a French government envoy, Marc Bonnefous, to look into the kidnaping last week of two French diplomats and one embassy employee.

Marcel Fontaine, vice consul at the French Embassy, Marcel Carton, protocol officer, and his daughter, Danielle Perez, a secretary, were kidnaped in West Beirut on Friday and responsibility was claimed by the shadowy Muslim fundamentalist Islamic Jihad (Holy War) group.

Two Britons, a Dutch Jesuit priest and American journalist Terry Anderson were kidnaped this month in abductions claimed by the Islamic Jihad. Four other Americans were kidnaped between March, 1984, and January.