Ground Impact, Not Bomb, Killed 3 TWA Blast Victims, Experts Say

ATHENS — Two American women and a baby were killed when they hit the ground, not by the bomb that blew them out of a Trans World Airlines jetliner, pathologists who examined the bodies said Monday.

Greek police said they want to go to Lebanon to question a Lebanese woman about last Wednesday’s bombing, which also killed an American occupying the seat under which the bomb apparently was placed, official sources said.

Police said over the weekend that the woman, May Elias Mansour, was the only suspect in the bombing.

Killed by Bomb

Greek and U.S. forensic pathologists said that only Alberto Ospina, 39, of Stratford, Conn., was killed by the bomb. He occupied Seat 10F on the Boeing 727, which was bound from Rome to Athens and landed safely after the explosion.

“We found a little nub of the explosive mechanism,” said Nikos Benardis, a Justice Ministry forensic pathologist who supervised the five hours of autopsies. “We believe that it belonged to the bomb.”

A Greek-American woman, her daughter and granddaughter, all from Annapolis, Md., were also blown out through the jagged hole the bomb tore in the plane’s side at 15,000 feet over southern Greece. They were sitting one row behind Ospina.

“Ospina is the one that had primary blast injuries,” said U.S. Navy Cmdr. Michael Clark, one of three American pathologists participating in the autopsies. “The man seated to his left on the aircraft had injuries to his right side. That would indicate the bomb was under Mr. Ospina.”

A woman identifying herself as Mansour said Saturday in Tripoli, Lebanon, that she flew from Cairo to Athens earlier Wednesday aboard the ill-fated plane but denied that she was involved in the bombing.

On Monday, Mansour told a reporter that she would cooperate with investigators if they came to Lebanon but added that “I am not ready to go to Greece for the purpose.”

Mansour, a 31-year-old boutique owner and member of the leftist Syrian National Social Party, has denied that she occupied Seat 10F.

However, TWA spokesman Steve Heckscher said by telephone Monday from London, “Miss Mansour definitely sat in Seat 10F on the Cairo-Athens flight.”

Heckscher said the bomb was placed under the seat cushion and contained about one pound of a powerful plastic explosive and a sophisticated timing mechanism.

An obscure group calling itself the Arab Revolutionary Cells has claimed responsibility for the blast.