Hezbollah Bombings in Europe

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"Hezbollah Bombings in Europe"

News article

By: Stephen H. Miller

Date: July 22, 1985

About the Author: At the time this article was published, Stephen H. Miller was a reporter for the Associated Press, a world wide news agency.

INTRODUCTION

In 1982, Israel invaded southern Lebanon, asserting that the region was a base for Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) terrorist operations against Israeli citizens. The invasion spurred resistance from Muslims in the region. Within Lebanon, extremist Muslims formed Hezbollah, or "Party of God." Conceived in Iran and funded by militant interests in both Iran and Syria, Hezbollah engaged in terrorist activities with the stated mission of ending Western and Israeli presence in the region. Hezbollah's preferred methods of terror included kidnappings, executions, paramilitary-style raids, and suicide bomb attacks.

Islamic Jihad, the most militant organization affiliated with Hezbollah, carried out some of the most deadly acts of terror in the 1980s. The group claimed responsibility for the April 18, 1983 attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut. The embassy was the target of a suicide truck bomb that carried 400 pounds of explosives. The bomb killed sixty-three people, including seventeen Americans, decimating the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA's) entire Middle East bureau. Later that year, on October 23, Hezbollah members drove a truck loaded with explosives into U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon, killing 241 Marines. At the same time, a simultaneous suicide bomb attack occurred on French forces in Beirut, killing fifty-eight paratroopers. Finally, in December of 1983, a series of attacks were launched against U.S. and French interests in Kuwait. Six people died and eighty others were injured.

The wave of terror continued during the next several years. Between 1982 and 1992, many westerners were kidnapped by Hezbollah. Some were killed, others were held captive for several years. On April 12, 1984, a bomb planted by a Hezbollah-linked group exploded in a restaurant near a U.S. base in Torrejon, Spain, killing eighteen and injuring eighty-three. On September 20, 1984, a suicide bomber struck the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing twenty people.

On June 14, 1985, Hezbollah took responsibility for hijacking TWA flight 847. One hundred and fiftythree passengers and crew were held for seventeen days. One passenger, U.S. sailor Robert Stethem, was killed during the ordeal. The hijackers demanded the release of the Kuwait 17, those arrested after the 1983 attacks in Kuwait, as well as seven hundred other Shia Muslim prisoners held by Israel.

PRIMARY SOURCE

Bombs tore open a U.S. airline office and damaged a synagogue and Jewish nursing home Monday in Copenhagen, a European capital that had previously escaped the recent international terrorist wave.

Twenty-seven people were injured, at least three seriously, authorities said. Three Americans were among those who suffered minor injuries, the U.S. Embassy reported.

Police later announced they had taken six foreigners into custody for questioning in the bombings, but they did not disclose the detainees' identities.

In Beirut, Lebanon, an anonymous telephone caller told The Associated Press the attacks were carried out by the Shiite Moslem terrorist organization Islamic Jihad to avenge an Israeli raid on a southern Lebanese village Sunday. The claim could not be verified.

One bomb gutted the quarters of Northwest Orient Airlines near Copenhagen's Tivoli amusement park. Northwest Orient is the only American airline with offices in the Danish capital.

Another attack, which some bystanders said involved two bombs, damaged the Copenhagen Synagogue and an adjacent Jewish home for the elderly, the Meyers Minne Nursing Home, on a narrow street near Copenhagen's 17th-century Round Tower.

J. H. Hasselriis, a deputy police director, said there was only one bomb at the synagogue and it apparently was planted in advance. The bomb at the airline office was either thrown at it or placed outside just before it exploded, he said.

He said each of the bombs was estimated to have contained 4.4 pounds of explosives.

Both attacks came within minutes of each other in mid-morning, as shoppers crowded nearby streets, taking advantage of late summer sales.

Harald Ruetz, a Northwest Orient manager, said one employee and two customers were in the office at the time of the explosion, which appeared to have been set off outside its plate-glass windows.

"Otherwise, she would have died," he said of the employee, who escaped with minor injuries. Ruetz said he did not know how badly injured the customers were.

An employee of the nursing home said about seven of its residents had been injured, none seriously. The other victims apparently were passers-by at the two sites.

Police said about half the injured were Danes and half foreigners. The most seriously injured victim was reported by police to have suffered burns over 85 percent of the body.

Hasselriis told reporters six foreigners were being questioned but had not been formally arrested. He declined to give their nationalities, but indicated they came from Mediterranean countries.

Hasselriis said none of the six were detained near the bombing sites. The Danish news agency Ritzau said at least some of them had been trying to leave Copenhagen on the 40-minute hydrofoil boat link to nearby Sweden.

Police were investigating a suspected bomb in a Northwest Orient flight bag pulled from Copenhagen's New Harbor, near the hydrofoil dock, Hasselriis said. News photographers said another suspected bomb was found in a courtyard of Christiansborg Palace, seat of Denmark's Parliament, but police said later it was not an explosive device.

Military bomb experts said the device fished out of the harbor appeared to be of the same type as those used at the airline office and synagogue, Danish television reported.

Prime Minister Poul Schlueter issued a statement expressing "sorrow that we now experience that Denmark too is hit by terrorist activity. We have escaped for many years, while unscrupulous men and organizations have spread death and destruction in other European countries."

The Beirut caller indicated Copenhagen was targeted precisely because Denmark had escaped terrorist activity until now.

"If certain countries believe they are free of our strikes, let them know that sooner or later we shall reach . . . the headquarters of all Western and Arab leaders who spin round the imperialist universe," the caller said.

"One of our cells in the Scandinavian countries" had retaliated for "the barbaric attack on the village of Qabrikha," the caller said.

Israeli troops raided the south Lebanon villages of Qabrikha and Sejoud on Sunday, and at least three local residents were reported killed.

Islamic Jihad, which translates as Islamic Holy War, is a shadowy group or network of terrorists that has claimed responsibility for many anti-Western attacks in Lebanon and abroad in recent years.

Some experts had theorized that terrorists used Scandinavia as a haven between actions elsewhere in Western Europe and would not endanger their refuge by attacks within Nordic territory.

SIGNIFICANCE

The 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon exacerbated the struggle for power within the country. Militant groups, such as Hezbollah, spread terror though the Middle East and Europe, through hijacking, suicide bombings, and assassinations. The Shia based organization, tactically and financially backed by both Syria and Iran, used the terror tactics to expel western and U.S. influences from the region. On some occasions, the strategy was effective, as both France and the U.S. withdrew their forces from Lebanon after the 1983 attacks. Terror activity by Hezbollah continued through the 1980s, usually in response to an Israeli action or to force the release of operatives.

Due in part to continuing casualties inflicted by Hezbollah, the Israeli Army withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000 to a border approved by the United Nations. Hezbollah still considers the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms region of the Golan Heights near the Lebanon-Syria border to be part of Lebanon. The military wing of Hezbollah maintains a presence at this border and launches periodic attacks against Israeli forces in the area.

Many in the Arab world view Hezbollah as a legitimate political party seeking to establish an Islamic government in Lebanon, while most Western nations view Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.