Death in Rome Aboard Flight 110

In the departure lounge of Rome's Leonardo da Vinci Airport, Robert Suit, 60, travel editor of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, was waiting with friends to board a plane for New York when they saw a commotion farther down the concourse. "Must be some movie star," one of them remarked. After some nuns hurried past them, another quipped, "No, maybe it's the Pope."

"Then some girls ran by," Suit recalled, "and they were yelling, 'It's a bomb, a bomb--everybody out!' We saw the bank slam down its window and heard some pops, which sounded like firecrackers. That's when we said, 'My God, it must be serious!' " In fact, what the hundreds of unsuspecting travelers heard was the sound of gunfire. The fusillade signaled the start of a guerrilla attack in Rome last week that turned into the bloodiest rampage in the surreal five-year history of Arab skyjack terrorism. Before it ended 30 hours later--in the sand beyond a runway of the airport in Kuwait--31 people had been killed in Rome and one more in Athens.

The terrorists, who later identified themselves as Palestinian guerrillas, first struck at the Rome airport's security checkpoint during the early afternoon rush hour. "I was heading toward the security check, and up front I saw a tall, well-dressed young man," a British stewardess recalled. "As he approached the guards, he put his hand in his pocket and took out a pistol." Instantly, his companions--perhaps as many as seven --opened their overnight bags, took out submachine guns and began to spray gunfire in every direction.

Too Late. The gunmen then ran out onto the flight field. One group of the terrorists headed toward Pan American's Flight 110, which was preparing to depart for Beirut and Teheran with 59 passengers and ten crew members on board.

At the first sign of trouble, Captain Andrew Erbeck told the passengers to crouch on the floor. Before he could order the 707's doors closed, a clean-shaven young man in a white sweater ran to the foot of the steps, a canister in his outstretched hand. "They're coming with grenades!" First Officer Robert Davison shouted. "Get the people out of here!" It was too late.

Flight Engineer Kenneth Pfrang was knocked to the galley floor by the first grenade. "I got hit by the concussion," he said later, "and I thought, 'Why aren't I dead?' Then I realized it was some sort of incendiary device and smoke was pouring out of the canister." Within seconds, there were more flashes as two phosphorus grenades went off inside the forward section. Two other grenades were thrown into the rear; suddenly the entire plane was filled with roiling black smoke.

Stewardess Lari Hamel was knocked to the floor in the first-class aisle and four or five bodies fell on top of her; she managed to crawl to a wing exit and escape. In the rear of the plane, one passenger saw a guerrilla appear, gun in hand, and stop passengers from escaping out the rear ramp.

"It was a miracle that so many people did get out," said First Officer Davison. "The whole thing took no more than 90 seconds." Added Flight Engineer Pfrang: "I flew C-123s in Viet Nam, but I've never experienced anything that happened so fast or in which you were so helpless."

Grisly Bluff. Somehow, 40 passengers and crewmen managed to escape, mainly through emergency exits over the wings. Many suffered burns, including one passenger who died later. But 29 more were trapped inside, including all eleven passengers in the first-class section. Among the dead: four Moroccan officials, 14 relatives of employees of the Arabian-American Oil Co. who were flying to Saudi Arabia for Christmas, and Mrs. Bonnie Erbeck, wife of the plane's captain, who often accompanied her husband on his trips.

From the Pan Am plane, the terrorists ran down the tarmac to a West German Lufthansa 737 jet that had already been commandeered by the second group of guerrillas. On board, besides the pilot and three other Lufthansa crew members, were ten hostages who had been rounded up in the terminal and outside on the tarmac. An Italian customs guard had resisted the terrorists and been shot dead outside the Lufthansa jet. At 1:32 p.m., only 41 minutes after the first shot had been fired, the plane took off with the crew, hostages and five guerrillas aboard; other terrorists may have stayed behind.

The terrorists first flew to Greece to demand the release of two Palestinians who were in prison there awaiting trial for their role in an attack at the Athens airport last August in which four people had been killed. As soon as the 737 landed at Athens, the skyjackers announced to Greek authorities that they had already murdered four of their hostages. Unless their demands were met, they said, they would take off again and crash the plane into the heart of Athens. They had actually murdered one hostage and wounded another, but the rest of their boast turned out to be a grisly bluff: they harmed none of the others, and had no intention of killing themselves. After 16 hours on the ground in Athens, the plane took off again.

Both Lebanon and Cyprus refused to allow the jetliner to land, and the terrorists finally ordered it to put down at Damascus. Syrian Air Force Commander Major General Naji Jamil tried to talk the skyjackers into releasing their hostages "for humanitarian reasons and for the sake of Arab patriotism." When the guerrillas refused, the Syrians refueled the plane, provided food and treated an injured terrorist for a head wound.

A little more than three hours later, the "mad odyssey," as one Arab commentator described it, ended in the Persian Gulf emirate of Kuwait. Again airport authorities refused landing permission. Under threat from the terrorists, Captain Joe Kroese brought in his plane anyway on a secondary runway. After an hour of haggling between the terrorists and Kuwaiti officials over conditions of surrender, the twelve hostages and crewmen quietly walked down the ramp, followed a short time later by their captors. "We are Palestinian Arabs, not criminals," declared one of them. "The criminals are the ones who bomb Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon."

Dirty Action. Whatever faction of Black September or other Palestinian extremist group had committed the atrocities at Rome and Athens, it could hardly have anticipated the wave of shock and anger that erupted from Arab capitals. Even leaders of the major Palestinian commando organizations chimed in; one branded the killings a "dirty action." Many leaders were distressed that the attack damaged the image of the Arabs at a time when their cause was gaining international sympathy. As Cairo's influential Al-Ahram noted, it was difficult "to imagine any benefit from an operation that makes the people of Europe feel that they, not the Israeli aggressor, have to bear the consequences of injustices suffered by the Palestinians."

In the past Kuwait, like other Arab states, has been reluctant to punish Palestinian guerrillas. This time Kuwait may find it impolitic to be so generous.

When the Moroccan government, which lost four high officials in the Rome massacre, asked the Kuwaitis to treat the prisoners "without pity or mercy," the Kuwait government promised to inflict "severe punishment." By week's end it announced that it might be willing to turn the murderers over to the Palestine Liberation Organization for "trial" --thereby letting Kuwait off the hook.

But if the angry mood of moderate guerrillas was any indication, the terrorists may be in for more than they expected from their fellow commandos.

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