
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 19, 1992                   TAG: 9203190205
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA                                LENGTH: Medium

JIHAD CLAIMS EMBASSY BOMBING U.S. OFFERS HELP TO ISRAEL, ARGENTINA

Workers uncovered more bodies Wednesday in the bomb-wrecked rubble of the Israeli Embassy, while a terrorist group in the Middle East claimed responsibility for the devastating attack.

By nightfall, officials had confirmed 21 deaths from the Tuesday bombing. One official said 252 people were injured.

President Bush told Israel and Argentina that the United States stood ready to help bring to justice those responsible.

He sent personal messages of condolence and concern Tuesday night to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir of Israel and President Carlos Menem of Argentina, press secretary Marlin Fitzwater said.

In Beirut, a statement bearing the name of the pro-Iranian group Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War) claimed responsibility for the bombing, which it said was a suicide attack carried out by an Argentine who had converted to Islam.

The typed statement, delivered to a Western news agency, said the attack was "one of our continuing strikes against the criminal Israeli enemy in an open-ended war, which will not cease until Israel is wiped out of existence."

Menem called the statement the "craziness of unbalanced, demented minds, of men who have not learned to live or co-exist in peace." He added: "We are the recipients of a terrorist act in which, of course, Argentina has no part."

He noted that Islamic Jihad was a pro-Iran group. But Iran's embassy in Buenos Aires denied any Iranian link to the bombing.

The Islamic Jihad statement said a Muslim convert called "Abu Yasser" carried out the bombing to avenge the deaths of Sheik Abbas Moussawi and his family in an Israeli air raid Feb. 16 in southern Lebanon. Moussawi, a Shiite Muslim leader, was believed to head Hezbollah, or Party of God, a pro-Iranian terrorist organization linked by experts to Islamic Jihad.

Islamic Jihad has been blamed for numerous hostage-takings and terrorist attacks, including the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut and bombings of the U.S. Embassy there in 1983 and 1984.

Keywords:
FATALITY

by CNB