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In Lebanon, gunmen dumped the corpses of three Western hostages on a road in the Chouf Mountains east of Beirut. The victims were identified as American University Librarian Peter Kilburn, 60, who had disappeared in Beirut in December 1984; and Leigh Douglas, 34, and Philip Padfield, 40, two British teachers who had been abducted three weeks before their murder. The men were among 18 British, French, U.S. and other hostages being held in Lebanon. A stenciled statement found near the bloodstained bodies said they had been killed in retaliation for the U.S. air strike against Libya. The statement was signed by the "Arab Revolutionary Cells," a group believed to be linked to the notorious terrorist Abu Nidal, who reportedly is in Libya.
In Khartoum, William Cokals, a communications officer in the U.S. embassy to the Sudan, was shot in the head and partly paralyzed as he drove home Tuesday night. Street mobs marched on the embassy, and at week's end, the U.S. ordered the evacuation from Sudan of 200 to 250 embassy employees and their families.
In London, a major tragedy was averted at Heathrow Airport Thursday morning when security guards for El Al, the Israeli airline, found a bomb in the luggage of a pregnant Irishwoman who was attempting to board a flight from New York City. The bomb was timed to go off when the flight would have been back in the air winging toward Tel Aviv. Said George Churchill-Coleman, head of Scotland Yard's antiterrorist branch: "It is highly likely that an explosion from a device of this type would have resulted in the loss of the aircraft, a 747 jumbo, and the 400 passengers and crew." British police believe the pregnant woman might have been duped into unknowingly carrying the bomb by her lover, Nezar Hindawi, 35, who was arrested Friday evening by Scotland Yard.
In the short run it seemed likely that there would be more such attacks, although U.S. officials hoped that the bombing raid would eventually diminish the taste for murders, hijackings and other outrages, not only by Gaddafi but among terrorist groups that he sponsors and trains. Meanwhile the diplomatic and political fallout from the bombing raid has damaged the U.S. position in Europe. Government leaders, who had been pressed hard by the U.S. since the December airport attacks to impose diplomatic and economic sanctions on Libya, were careful to balance criticisms of the American raid with strong condemnations of Libya and terrorism. Opposition politicians, especially those on the left, were less circumspect. In the Netherlands, for example, Foreign Minister Hans van den Broek observed in fairly mild terms that "we seriously doubt if terrorism can be actually erased this way," but Klaas de Vries, parliamentary spokesman for the Labor Party, thundered that the strikes "made fools of all European ministers who had urged restraint."
West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, disapproving of the raid, warned that it might provoke outbursts of "primitive anti-Americanism." Indeed, demonstrators marched and shouted Saturday in Rome, West Berlin and even London, where Prime Minister Thatcher came under scathing attack from critics who accused her of exposing her countrymen to terrorist vengeance.