Toll 18; Revenge for Raid on PLO Termed Motive

The terrorists who launched the murderous attacks at international airports in Rome and Vienna were described Saturday as Palestinians bent on avenging the death of at least 73 people killed in the Israeli air raid on the Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in Tunisia.

Rome’s deputy police chief Riccardo Infelisi said a note found on one of the surviving gunmen mentioned the Oct. 1 raid outside Tunis “where also several civilians, men, women, and children, were killed.” The note indicated that children were a particular target of the Friday attacks that killed an 11-year-old American girl, Natasha Simpson, in the Rome assault.

‘Violated Our Land’

“For every drop of (Palestinian) blood spilled, we will spill other blood, as you have violated our land, we will violate yours, and we will also spill the blood of your children to make you feel the sadness of ours,” the note said, according to authorities.

Israel raided the PLO headquarters in retaliation for the murders of three Israelis in late September by pro-Palestinian terrorists at the Larnaca, Cyprus, yacht basin. The killers claimed the Israelis were spies.

The toll of dead from the carnage at the airports Friday rose to 18 when Elena Tomarello, 67, of Naples, Fla., died Saturday of wounds in a Rome hospital, the fifth American fatality. All five were killed in the Rome attack.

The attackers, hurling hand grenades and firing automatic weapons indiscriminately in the check-in zones of the two airport terminals, killed or fatally wounded 14 passengers and bystanders, 12 of them, including all five Americans, at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport. Four of the terrorists were killed by police and airline security guards, three here and one after the assault at Vienna’s Schwechat Airport.

At least 121 people were wounded in the two attacks, including one of the four terrorists who struck in Rome and two of the three who carried out the Vienna assault.

The assaults at both airports appeared aimed at the check-in counters of El Al, the Israeli national airline. Deputy police chief Infelisi said that the four attackers here were “without a doubt” Palestinians but that their country of passport-origin was not yet known.

He said that the note found on the only survivor among the four gunmen in the Rome attack was one of two so-called “spiritual testaments” written by the terrorists and signed by a group called the “Martyrs of Palestine.” The second was found on the body of one of the terrorists killed during the attacks.

The notes were handwritten in Arabic and explained why the attackers decided “to vote with their lives” in a suicide attack.

Citing Islamic and pan-Arabist principles, the notes said the terrorists decided on a suicide mission to “give a new and better impulse to the struggle against Zionism and imperialism.”

The notes said the near simultaneous raids at the airports heralded the start of a new war of terror.

“The tears we have shed, whether for the Tunis raid, or other things, will be exchanged for blood. The war has started from this moment. . . . Many other fighters are already ready to carry out similar actions, not only in Italy but in other parts of the world,” they said.

‘Creation of Chaos’

Infelisi was asked if there was any connection between Friday’s terrorists here and other terrorists, including those who struck at Vienna and the hijackers earlier this year of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro and an EgyptAir jetliner that was forced to land in Malta. He replied: “Well, they all have in common the Palestinian cause and the creation of chaos, but who is behind them, who knows.”

In Vienna, a state police official identified the Schwechat attackers as Abdelaziz Merzoughi, 25, Ben Ahmed Chaoval, 25, and Mongi ben Abdullah Saadkoui, 26. Saadkoui was killed by police.

A senior police official in the Austrian capital said that the two survivors speak Arabic with a “Palestinian” dialect and that there is other evidence that they are Palestinians, but he declined to be specific.

Domenico Sica, an Italian investigating magistrate, questioned the terrorist survivor in a Rome hospital, ANSA, the Italian news agency reported. The survivor was identified as Mohammed Sarham, 19, ANSA said, and he admitted to the magistrate that he and his three dead companions had carried out the Leonardo da Vinci assault.

Sarham, according to the ANSA, refused to disclose the names of his accomplices but said that they all belonged to a group “dedicated to fighting Zionist objectives.”

Breakaway Group

An Italian newspaper report said that Sarham told judicial investigators that his organization is headed by Abu Nidal, who years was expelled from Yasser Arafat’s mainstream Fatah organization within the PLO because he considered Arafat too moderate. Born Sabri Banna, Abu Nidal at first called his renegade group Black June, changing the name later to Revolutionary Council of Fatah.

ANSA reported that Sarham said that he was born in the Chatilla Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut. Chatilla and another refugee camp named Sabra were the site of a massacre of more than 300 Palestinians by Lebanese Christian militiamen in September, 1982, in the aftermath of the Israel’s invasion of Lebanon that year.

Italian judicial sources reported that investigators here are trying to establish whether there are links between the Rome airport terrorists and Achille Lauro hijacking episode during which an elderly American tourist confined to a wheelchair was murdered.

Some Italian commentators expressed the belief Saturday that the Rome and Vienna airport attackers belonged to factions in the Palestinian movement that want to discredit the PLO chairman Arafat because he agreed to join with Jordan’s King Hussein in the latter’s moves to try to arrange peace talks with Israel.

Not long after the twin airport assaults Friday, the PLO at Arafat’s headquarters in Tunis and at PLO offices here and elsewhere in Europe and the Middle East issued statements condemning the acts and denying PLO involvement.

May Have Taken Drugs

The Italian press suggested Saturday that the terrorists were high on drugs, probably amphetamines, when they assaulted the airport terminal installations.

Sources at the Rome hospitals where the victims were taken said that most of the wounded appeared to have shrapnel wounds caused by the explosion of the hand grenades.

By late Saturday, Leonardo da Vinci airport was fully back in operation, including the area around the El Al counters, and the adjacent counters of TWA and Pan American. Only the bullet holes in the plate glass windows bore testimony to the slaughter.