Rolling Grenades : Grim Sign of Vienna Raid: Pools of Blood

Pools of drying blood stained the black-and-white floor near the El Al Israel airline counter at Schwechat airport in the aftermath of Friday’s deadly assault by three terrorist gunmen armed with automatic rifles and grenades.

The area was strewn with glass, overturned tables, pieces of luggage and cartridges from the gunmen’s Soviet-designed Kalashnikov assault rifles. In a corner lay an abandoned bicycle.

Much of the blood had trickled away from the spot where Ekehard Karner, 50, an Austrian professor, lay sprawled on the floor, his right arm poking out from under a long sheet of brown wrapping paper that had been placed over his body.

More pools of blood stood near one of the exits where dozens of screaming passengers had tried to escape the mayhem that finally ended with three people dead--including Karner and one of the terrorists--and 47 others injured.

In Tel Aviv, survivors and witnesses recalled the horror of the attack. They were Christian pilgrims and tourists who had stood at the El Al check-in counter at Schwechat airport when hand grenades started rolling across the floor. Conversation was broken by the blasts of automatic gunfire.

Panicked Confusion

Several people said they tried to hide or flee in the panicked confusion. Others said they heard weeping and screaming mingled with the echo of gunshots.

“I saw five hand grenades like black balls rolling through the hall,” said Rheinhard Shubert, 39, a tourist from southern Austria.

“I saw two or three people lying on the floor, and one was bleeding from the throat. I hit the floor and crept away for shelter,” he said.

Friday’s El Al flight from Rome was postponed, but the plane from Vienna arrived in Israel on Friday afternoon. Many of the passengers who trooped off the jet at Ben-Gurion airport outside Tel Aviv were glassy-eyed and weary. Twenty-seven pilgrims on their way to Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank were aboard the flight, and none was hurt.

Friends and relatives greeted the passengers with great emotion. One man leaped over a barricade and past police to hug passenger Wolfgang Weisseger. Two crying women sat on a bench in the rain and hugged.

‘Filled With Blood’

“The airport was filled with blood. Two of our El Al security guards were badly wounded. One boy was hit in the head and others were also hurt,” said Shoshana Rabinowitz, an Israeli returning home from a visit in Austria.

A visibly shaken tourist from Vienna, Rudolph Gerhart, said: “I saw a lady with her leg shot, lying on the floor, and another man on the floor with a wound. I grabbed a lady standing behind me and pulled her away to the corner. We hit the floor for a while. I heard a woman shrieking.”

Undercover detectives, Israeli security officials and members of a 40-member anti-terrorist unit, posted to supervise the El Al check-in, immediately began firing at the gunmen.

Airport police director Franz Kaefer said the assailants fired randomly into the crowd, wounding passengers and policemen caught in the hail of bullets that killed Karner.

A Christmas tree stood a few feet from his body. Some of its silvery ornaments had been crushed by glass from windows along the roofline that had been shattered by gunfire.

Discarded Fur Coat

Pieces of luggage had broken open. A red scarf, three shoes, two fur hats and a full-length fox coat lay discarded amid the blood.

The three unidentified terrorists had shot their away out of the airport building, grabbed a Mercedes car parked outside and fled. They threw a hand grenade at a pursuing police car but failed to hit it.

Police chased and fired on the getaway car. On a local road near Schwadorf, a village about six miles to the southeast, the three terrorists abandoned the Mercedes, which was crippled by police bullets, Kaefer said.

The terrorists attempted to stop two oncoming cars, but police engaged them in a gun battle and killed one terrorist. The two others raised their arms in surrender, police said.

As police detained the two survivors, both of whom were wounded, they found one of them still clutching a hand grenade. It was immediately defused.