Libyan Diplomatic Aide Killed in Rome

ROME —  A Libyan diplomatic official was shot to death at close range here Sunday, with a group opposing the regime of Col. Moammar Kadafi claiming responsibility.

The envoy, Farag Omar Makhyoun, a 31-year-old press officer at the Libyan Embassy, managed to draw a .38-caliber pistol and pursue the assailant, apparently wounding him, before dying in a pool of blood, according to the Italian police.

Responsibility for the attack was claimed by Al Borkan, an obscure group whose Arabic name means “ the volcano.” Al Borkan also took responsibility for the killing a year ago of a former Libyan ambassador to Italy, Ammar Taggazi, and for the Madrid attack on a Libyan Embassy employee there last September.

Investigators expressed belief that the killers were either Libyans opposed to Kadafi’s erratic rule or followers of the Imam Moussa Sadr, the spiritual leader of the Lebanese Shia Muslim community, who disappeared in 1978 while on a visit to Libya. Shia Muslims charge that his disappearance was Kadafi’s work.

On Sunday, the official Libyan news agency charged that the latest “vile assassination” was the work of hired assassins “closely tied to the American secret services.”

Investigators said a second terrorist apparently accompanied the gunman in Sunday’s attack but did not open fire. They quoted a witness who reported seeing two men fleeing after the shots, which came at close range and hit Makhyoun in the neck, chest, abdomen and right arm and hand, police here said.

Despite his wounds, the police said, he pursued his attacker down a street and around the corner, exchanging shots and probably wounding him before collapsing while still clutching his pistol, according to an anti-terrorist police spokesman, Francesco Sirleo.

The gunman dropped his 7.65-millimeter, silencer-equipped pistol, jumped over a wall and escaped on foot, witnesses told police.