Gunmen Kill Senior Official in W. Germany

A senior West German Foreign Ministry official was assassinated outside his apartment in a Bonn suburb Friday night, and police said terrorist gunmen were suspected.

Police said the victim was Gerold von Braunmuehl, 51, who was the head of the Political Department of the Foreign Ministry and a close associate of Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher.

The diplomat was shot as he left a taxi in front of his home in the suburb of Ippendorf by a masked gunman who fired two shots at him as he was removing a valise from the trunk of the taxi.

Police said the taxi driver told them that Von Braunmuehl then tried to run to safety but that another masked man appeared and two more shots were fired.

The diplomat fell dead, and the two gunmen got into a red Opel car and drove away.

Claim of Responsibility

At the scene, police said they found a seven-page letter claiming responsibility for the assassination on behalf of an organization called the Revolutionary Front--Western Europe, Commando Ingrid Schubert.

Bonn authorities said the group is apparently affiliated with the Red Army Faction, the remnants of the notorious Baader-Meinhof urban guerrilla group that carried on a campaign of terrorism in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Schubert, a convicted terrorist, was found hanged in her cell in a Munich prison in November, 1977, in what police termed a suicide. She had been sentenced in 1970 to six years in prison for assisting in the escape of terrorist leader Andreas Baader, who was later recaptured. She later received an additional seven-year sentence for a series of bank robberies.

Baader and two other jailed terrorists were found dead or dying in their cells in October, 1977. Baader’s co-leader Ulrike Meinhof was found dead in her cell the year before. All the deaths were attributed to suicide, a finding disputed by leftist groups.

Police said they had no immediate information as to why the diplomat was singled out for assassination, they said, other than that he held a sensitive, high post in the Foreign Ministry.

Married With 3 Children

The victim was married and had three children and, officials at the Foreign Ministry said late Friday, he had been working late and took a taxi home from the office.

Von Braunmuehl was one of the most respected officials of the Foreign Ministry and had been one of Genscher’s closest colleagues for years, according to a ministry spokesman, Juergen Chrobog.

The ministry’s Political Department is one of the largest, handling basic foreign policy questions such as European unity and relations with the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Nations.

Genscher went to the scene of the shooting and also spoke with Von Braunmuehl’s wife, Chrobog said.

Genscher “learned of this new, brutal attack of political terrorism with consternation,” Chrobog said.