Car Bomb Injures 31 at British Base in W. Germany

A car bomb exploded Monday night at the British army and air force headquarters in West Germany, and 31 people were reported injured, the British military and West German police said.

The bomb went off at 10:30 p.m. in a vehicle parked outside an officers’ mess during a going-away party at the British Army of the Rhine and Royal Air Force headquarters in Rheindahlem, said Wing Cmdr. Colin Tavner, spokesman at the Rheindahlem base.

British and German officials said the bomb went off just a few minutes after an anonymous caller warned the Duesseldorf news bureau of the German news service Deutsche Presse-Agentur of an impending explosion.

DPA said the caller spoke English and appeared to be reading a prepared text. The German reporter who took the call said he was unable to converse with the caller and clearly understood only the word “bomb.”

A police spokesman who declined to be identified said the blast blew out windows in buildings in a radius of several hundred yards. Most of the injuries were reported to be minor.

Responsibility for bomb blasts at other NATO military bases in West Germany in recent years has been claimed by West German leftist terrorist groups, either the notorious Red Army Faction or offshoots.

Tavner said that about 7,000 military members and their dependents live on the Rheindahlem base, the site of the 2nd Tactical Allied Air Force and the Northern Army Group.

The Rheindahlem base is about 18 miles west of Duesseldorf and six miles west of Moenchengladbach in northern West Germany, near the Dutch border.

Peter Kueppers, a police spokesman at Moenchengladbach, said public access to the officers’ mess hall had been unrestricted, in contrast to other areas of the Rheindahlem base. Police quickly sealed the area off after the blast, he said.