4 GIs Wounded in Attack Outside Honduran Nightclub

Attackers hurled hand grenades and opened fire on a group of American soldiers leaving a discotheque early Sunday in the northern city of San Pedro Sula, wounding four of them, a U.S. Embassy spokesman said.

In a telephone interview, embassy spokesman Charles Barkley said the attack occurred shortly before 1 a.m. local time. He said the soldiers were on leave, dressed in civilian clothes and carried no weapons. He declined to give their identities until next of kin are notified.

All four were hospitalized in stable condition, he said.

In Washington, Pentagon spokeswoman Maj. Kathy Wood said a total of nine soldiers were in the group that was attacked. She said that 10 or 12 men attacked the GIs in the discotheque’s parking lot.

A police spokesman in San Pedro Sula said that the attackers threw grenades and opened fire on the soldiers as they boarded a small bus and that four soldiers were hit by fragments and bullets.

Two were hit in the legs, one in the back and another in the head, he said.

Bus Driver Called Hero

“I guess if there’s a hero in this, it’s the driver” of the bus, Wood said. “He took evasive action. He drove away fast. He did things right.” The driver’s name was not available.

Wood said she knew of no claims of responsibility for the attack.

It was not immediately clear if the attack was linked to anti-American sentiment in Honduras that culminated in an assault on the U.S. Embassy in the capital earlier this year.

She said the soldiers attacked are part of Joint Task Force Bravo, headquartered at Palmerola air base, a Honduran air force base 41 miles northeast of Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital. There are 1,200 U.S. military personnel at Palmerola and another 300 elsewhere in Honduras, she said.

Wood said that about 150 soldiers were on the one-day leave and that, as a precautionary measure, all returned to Palmerola.

The injured were taken to a hospital in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’ second-largest city, and were later flown to Palmerola, Barkley said.

The United States has been maintaining a variable contingent of American troops in Honduras since the leftist Sandinistas seized power in neighboring Nicaragua in 1979.