Terrorists Shoot Berlin Official, Bomb Airline

West German terrorists today shot a West Berlin immigration official in the legs and bombed the Cologne headquarters of the state-owned Lufthansa airline, authorities said.

A leftist urban guerrilla gang called Revolutionary Cells said it attacked the Lufthansa building to protest West German immigration policies. The predawn bombing caused about $47,000 damage but no one was injured, Cologne police said.

West Berlin police said Harald Hollenberg, 54, director of the city’s residents registry, was shot in both legs at close range by unidentified assailants as he left his house for work today. He was not gravely wounded.

Similar to Italian Group

A police spokesman said the shooting, which resembled “warning” attacks by Italy’s Red Brigades, was probably a terrorist act. Authorities believe two men and a woman were involved and said their escape car was found abandoned and in flames.

In letters received by a news agency and by an independent journalist, Revolutionary Cells said it attacked the Lufthansa building to protest West Germany’s expulsion of some Third World immigrants who had asked to remain in the country. They also said Lufthansa was targeted because it runs charter flights to Southeast Asian cities for West German men seeking exotic sexual encounters there.

Bonn’s expulsion of immigrants has also been the reported motive for several recent arson and bombing attacks on alien registration bureaus around the country. Hollenberg headed such a bureau.