Threats to U.S. Hostages Renewed by Beirut Captors : Islamic Jihad Warns Support for Israel Must End; 4 Arab Guerrillas Killed in South Lebanon Fighting

A pro-Iranian group holding American hostages in Lebanon issued its second threat against the captives in three days Sunday, saying they would come to harm unless the United States ended its support for Israel.

Islamic Jihad, or Islamic Holy War, which is believed to hold journalist Terry A. Anderson and university dean Thomas Sutherland, issued its demands in a typewritten statement accompanied by a photograph of Anderson.

The statement also praised the Shia Muslim suicide driver who drove a car bomb into an Israeli military convoy in south Lebanon last week, killing eight Israeli soldiers.

The group had said in a statement Friday that the hostages could suffer because of Israeli air raids launched on targets in Lebanon in retaliation for the car bomb. The raids killed at least 15 people.

Guerrilla Clash

Meanwhile, Israeli troops and allied militia members of the South Lebanon Army killed at least four Palestinian guerrillas Sunday in a clash in the foothills of Mt. Hermon in Lebanon, police said.

And in southern Beirut’s slums, pro-Iranian Muslims held rallies to mark the suicide truck bombing of a U.S. Marine base at Beirut airport that killed 241 Americans in 1983. A similar bombing at the same time killed 58 French paratroopers.

“This morning, exactly five years ago, the Marines and the French paratroopers were blown up,” Hezbollah’s spiritual guide, Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, told the crowd.

“Struggle to keep that panic alive. Struggle to keep this power going everywhere,” he said.

The kidnapers announced five demands for the release of the hostages. Otherwise, they said, they would make the United States pay a price that “would reflect adversely” on the captives’ fate.

The demands included: Release of moujahedeen (holy warriors) from all Arab and foreign jails; release of all Lebanese and Palestinian moujahedeen from Israeli jails in the occupied lands and its surrogates in south Lebanon’s border enclave and (Christian) East Beirut; withdrawal of all Israeli forces and their surrogates from south Lebanon; nonintervention in Lebanese domestic affairs . . . and payment of war reparations to all our oppressed people in Lebanon.

“In case of failure to meet these demands and continued support of Israel’s aggression against our people, the United States will pay the price very soon. This price will reflect adversely on the fate of the hostages we hold,” the statement added.

Gunfire, Grenades

On the edge of Israel’s self-designated security zone in south Lebanon, the sound of machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades reverberated across the slopes of Mt. Hermon.

A police spokesman in Hasbayya, which overlooks the border zone controlled by Israeli troops and the predominantly Christian militia of the South Lebanon Army, said the battle lasted five hours.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, led by Marxist George Habash, later issued a statement in Hasbayya, claiming its guerrillas attacked the Israeli-Lebanese militia position and killed or wounded 10. Police said they could not confirm any such casualties.