Mideast Link Hinted in Fatal London Blast

Scotland Yard on Friday investigated possible Middle East terrorist links to a man who was killed when a bomb he was handling exploded in a small hotel near Hyde Park, and a Lebanese group said that the man was on a mission to kill author Salman Rushdie.

The victim’s body was still in the hotel Friday, the remains of his room being still unsafe to enter. Scientific examination of the hotel wreckage disclosed that he appeared to have had two bombs, with a total of 50 pounds of military high explosive.

In Beirut, a previously unknown group signing itself the “Organization of the Strugglers of Islam” said that one of its members died in London while preparing to kill Rushdie, a British author accused of blasphemy by many Muslim leaders for his novel, “The Satanic Verses.” Before he died earlier this year, Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini offered a million-dollar bounty to anyone who would kill the author.

“Muslims mourn their first martyr, Gharib, who died while preparing a daring attack against the apostate Salman Rushdie,” the Beirut group said in a handwritten statement delivered to the An Nahar newspaper.

A bomb-maker, believed to have been Arab, blew himself up Thursday at the Beverly House Hotel in Paddington, starting a fire but leaving no other casualties.

According to Tehran radio, the bomber’s name was Gharib Mazreh. It is understood that the dead man signed himself Mazeh in the hotel register, and investigators from Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terrorist Squad said he was believed to have been of Moroccan origin, possibly holding a French passport.