Libya Death Toll Rises to 38; African Officials Tour Hospital

The death toll from the American bombing raid on Libya rose to 38 Sunday when a 55-year-old man died of his injuries, hospital officials said.

A doctor told reporters who toured Tripoli’s Central Hospital that the toll will go higher because two men in comas with head injuries were not expected to live.

Sudan’s defense minister, Maj. Gen. Osman Abdullah Mohammed, who arrived Saturday on an official visit, toured the hospital Sunday and criticized the United States.

“What I have seen this morning is just disgusting. Nothing can forgive attacking civilians,” he told journalists.

‘Not Based on Facts’

“Attacking a peaceful country on the grounds that it is the center of terrorism is a deception, and the terrorism charges against Libya are not based on any facts,” he added.

President Reagan ordered the Tuesday air raid, saying he had proof that Libya was behind a recent bomb attack that killed an American soldier at a discotheque in West Berlin.

Another African defense minister, Maj. Jean-Baptiste Lingani Boukhari from Burkina Faso, also toured the hospital.

He branded the raids “an act of cowardice” and said, “We have seen that the targets of these raids were civilian.”

Among the patients was 7-year-old Hassan Bashir, still unconscious with head injuries. Doctors said he would have permanent brain damage.

Injured by Concrete

Hospital officials said that most of the injuries were caused by concrete from collapsing apartment buildings in the residential neighborhood of Ben Ashur in central Tripoli.

The 4-year-old son of Libya’s leader, Col. Moammar Kadafi, has left the hospital where he was treated for injuries suffered in the air raid, but the boy’s 3-year-old brother remained hospitalized, their doctor said Sunday.

Kadafi escaped injury when U.S. warplanes struck his Aziziya Barracks headquarters at 2 a.m. Tuesday, but his 15-month-old adopted daughter, Hana, died of injuries, Libyan officials have said.

The Libyan strongman has been seen in public several times since the raid but has not held a news conference.

Dr. Ali Mugadimi took journalists to see Kadafi’s son, Kamis, in a Tripoli children’s hospital on Sunday. The boy’s head was completely bandaged, and only his eyes were visible. He was hooked up to several monitors, a throat tube and an intravenous tube and did not speak during the brief visit.

Mugadimi, a British-trained physician, declined to give the boy’s medical condition. But the 3-year-old looked around and appeared alert.

The doctor said Kamis’ older brother, Seph, has been discharged. Kadafi and his wife, Safia, have four other sons and a daughter.

Meanwhile, a newspaper in the United Arab Emirates said the U.S. Air Force F-111 fighter-bomber lost in the U.S. air raid on Libya has been pulled from the sea and shipped to the Soviet Union for technical inspection.

The Abu Dhabi paper Al Ittihad quoted Libyan sources as saying the bodies of the plane’s two crewmen, Capt. Fernando L. Ribas-Dominicci, 33, of Puerto Rico, and Capt. Paul F. Lorence, 31, of Oakland, are being kept in the Libyan capital.

The F-111, an advanced-technology plane that fires laser-guided bombs, was the only one unaccounted for after the U.S. warplanes hit targets around Tripoli and the port of Benghazi.

Tripoli radio advised citizens Sunday not to be alarmed by the sound of explosions as unexploded bombs are detonated.

In addition to badly damaging Kadafi’s compound at the barracks, the U.S. bombers struck four other targets in Tripoli and Benghazi and also hit a residential area in Tripoli.

They scored direct hits on one of their targets, the seaside Sidi Bilal naval installation 12 miles west of Tripoli, school officials said Sunday.

U.S. officials, saying the Libyan targets were all related to the support of terrorism, identified Sidi Bilal--which includes Libya’s naval academy--as a commando training base, but officials at the facility disputed that description when Western reporters visited the site.

“This is not a military target. . . . The Americans made a big mistake. These buildings have no connection with terrorism,” the school’s commander told reporters on an official tour of the compound Sunday.

The commander, who declined to give his name, said the school trained boys of 13 to 17 in various technical skills.

Libyan officials escorting reporters said the air raid killed two naval cadets and injured 15.

“I am surprised they hit us. They are just students here for simple training,” said the commander, adding that the compound had no air defenses.

U.S. jets dropped five bombs on the site, of which four exploded, he said. School officials said they heard the start of the air raids on Tripoli and had enough time to evacuate most of the 300 students before they came under attack.

Many had been evacuated before the raids as a precaution, they added.

6 Buildings Demolished

Six buildings--the sick bay, an officers’ club, a restaurant and some dormitories--were demolished, according to the commander.

Reporters were not allowed inside a walled area that Libyan naval instructors indicated was an underwater training facility, which Pentagon officials said was the main target of the attack on the base.

The bomb scored a direct hit on the school restaurant, reducing it to ashes. Bulldozers have cleared the wreckage into a giant pile of twisted metal and charred furniture.

Other prefabricated buildings on the hilly site overlooking the Mediterranean had caved in or had been shattered beyond use.