A 19-hour ordeal ended this morning for 10 persons, including a child, who were released by armed terrorists from a barricaded lavatory in the Orly Airport terminal building. They had been held hostage since mid-afternoon yesterday when the terrorists seized them after failing in a machinegun and grenade attack on a departing El Al jet. The terrorists released their victims at intervals after French authorities agreed to provide them with a 707 jet to fly to an unspecified country.
(A report from Beirut this afternoon said the terrorists landed at Baghdad airport and took off again for an unknown destination, according to airport sources.)
A young woman and her four-year-old daughter were the first to emerge from the lavatory at 8,20 a.m. local time today. Three more were released at 10:40 a.m., and five others, their hands tied behind their backs, were forced at gunpoint to accompany the terrorists to their waiting plane and then were released. None appeared to be hurt Earlier reports from Orly had said that only three hostages-a couple and child-were taken.
CANNOT AVOID ACCIDENTS OF THIS NATURE
French Interior Minister Michel Poniatovsky who conducted the negotiations with the terrorists said later “If there had not been hostages we could have treated the affair otherwise. We would have taken much more severe steps.” He said that in the presence of hostages, there was no choice but to accede to the terrorists’ demands for an escape plane. But “from the beginning we demanded the liberation of the hostages before embarking in the plane,” he said.
Poniatovsky, who was in constant contact with President Valery Giscard D’Estaing during the hours of negotiations and was assisted by the Egyptian Ambassador to France, Naguib Kadry, told reporters afterwards that French security police could not be held responsible for the terrorist actions at Orly, the second terrorist attack in less than a week on an El Al plane at France’s largest airport.
“Without putting a policeman on every square meter we cannot avoid accidents of this nature,” he said. “The number of police here is very great And they are efficient. I remind you that as soon as the first grenade was thrown, the police and the Republican Guards reacted and shot at the terrorists,” the Interior Minister said.
FRENCH POLICY BLASTED
But Israel’s Ambassador to France, Asher Ben Natan, said today that the French government’s low key reaction to the Jan. 13 bazooka attack on an El Al plane in take-off may have encouraged the terrorists to strike again yesterday. “There was not a strong enough condemnation of last week’s attempt,” he said in a radio interview. Ben Natan claimed that the terrorists seemed to be aware that they took little risk in launching attacks in or near Paris.
The French press had high praise today for Egyptian Ambassador Kadry for his efforts in negotiating the release of the hostages. He was also publicly thanked by Poniatovsky. At the same time the 20 Arab ambassadors in Paris issued a statement condemning the attack at Orly. They said “It cannot in any way serve the just cause of the Arab people.”
Meanwhile, another El Al plane embarking passengers at Orly Airport this morning was speedily evacuated after an anonymous telephone caller said a bomb had been placed aboard the aircraft. A bomb disposal squad was reported to be searching the plane which had arrived from Tel Aviv and was scheduled to leave at noon for Montreal. Last reports indicated that no bomb was found.
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