A police officer is hit by a Molotov cocktail outside the Turkish Embassy in Ottawa on Wednesday, where Kurdish demonstrators were protesting the arrest of their leader, Abdullah Ocalan. (AP)

By William Drozdiak
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 18, 1999; Page A1

BERLIN, Feb. 17 – Israeli security guards opened fire on a crowd of Kurdish protesters who stormed the Israeli consulate here today, killing three and wounding 16 others as angry demonstrations against Turkey's capture of a Kurdish rebel chief continued for a second day in a number of European cities.

The confrontation here occurred as supporters of separatist leader Abdullah Ocalan focused their wrath on Israel following unconfirmed news reports that Israeli intelligence officials helped Turkey track down and capture Ocalan late Monday after luring him from his haven at the residence of the Greek ambassador in Nairobi.

Although Turkey and Israel have cultivated a close security partnership over the past two years, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu vehemently denied that Israel played a role in Ocalan's arrest. But as a protective measure to forestall further attacks, he ordered the temporary closure of all Israeli diplomatic missions in Europe.

Ocalan, the founder of the outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party, was long considered the most wanted man in Turkey, where he stands accused of waging a brutal terrorist campaign in quest of a Kurdish homeland in southeastern Turkey. He was flown back to Turkey Tuesday night aboard a private jet and incarcerated at an island prison in the Sea of Marmara to await trial on terrorism charges.

In the two days since Ocalan's arrest, Kurdish exiles in Europe who revere him as a charismatic freedom fighter have occupied Greek and Kenyan diplomatic missions in more than a dozen cities, threatened mass suicides by setting themselves on fire and engaged in violent street demonstrations.

Although the protests abated today, Kurdish demonstrators continued to occupy Greek missions in the Swiss cities of Bern and Zurich and in London, the Associated Press reported. Forty protesters who hold a clerk hostage inside the Greek Embassy in London said they have begun a hunger strike, police said. Kurds also seized offices of the ruling parties in Sweden and Austria, demanding that the two countries press for Ocalan's release. The protesters held an unknown number of hostages at the Stockholm office.

The clash at the Israeli consulate here was the most violent in the two days of protests. It began about 2 p.m., when 200 Kurds marching toward the consulate in the Berlin suburb of Wilmersdorf burst through a security cordon set up by German police and tried to storm the four-story building. Armed with sticks, about two dozen of the protesters climbed fences and crawled through windows on the first and second floors, witnesses said.

When one protester tried to wrestle a pistol away from an Israeli guard, he was shot and killed. Some Kurds who got inside the building took an Israeli staff member captive, but she was quickly released. Israeli guards continued to fire for about 10 minutes before they subdued all the intruders.

"It was a security nightmare," said Miriam Shomrat, Israel's consul general here. "They managed to invade and run through the entire building." The injured Kurds were taken to local hospitals; no Israelis were injured, Shomrat said.

Netanyahu expressed regrets about those who were killed and wounded, but he defended the actions of the Israeli guards and said they fired in self defense. "Our people have standing orders to prevent, with force if necessary – including by opening fire – any attempt to take hostages and to defend themselves," Netanyahu told reporters in Tel Aviv.

Much of the violence over the past two days has occurred in Germany, where about 2 million Turks and about 500,000 Kurds live in a tenuous truce. But there are occasional bursts of violence that mirror the conflict in southeastern Turkey, where an estimated 30,000 people have been killed since Ocalan launched the Kurdish separatist revolt 14 years ago.

Since Ocalan's arrest, tensions between Kurdish and Turkish residents of Germany have reached the breaking point. A Turkish cultural center in Hamburg was firebombed Tuesday night, as were several Turkish fast-food stands. Today's melee alarmed the German government, particularly because it resulted from an apparent failure by German police to provide sufficient protection for an Israeli diplomatic mission.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder warned resident Kurds today that any kind of "illegal actions" would not be tolerated and would result in rapid deportation. "Anyone who breaks the law is not our friend," Schroeder told a rally of fellow Social Democrats in Bavaria. "We will tell them politely, but clearly, to leave."

Several years ago, Germany issued an international warrant calling for Ocalan's arrest on grounds that he was responsible for ordering firebombings of Turkish facilities here. But when Ocalan was detained in Rome four months ago after being expelled from his longtime base in Syria, Germany refused to follow through with an extradition request because it feared his trial would threaten public order by provoking violent clashes between Kurds and Turks.

It remains unclear whether the Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, eavesdropped on Ocalan during his brief stay in Moscow last October – as the Kurdish rebel has alleged – or during surveillance that preceded his capture in Kenya. Israeli officials deny it, and analysts specializing in intelligence matters said they doubt Turkey needed Israeli help in the capture operation or that the Mossad would be involved in an episode so far afield and peripheral to the Jewish state's interests.

But the very fact that Ocalan and many other Kurds believe Israel was involved provided the spark for the violence at the Israeli consulate here, and officials in Israel say they are worried it could inspire further assaults on Israeli interests at home and abroad.

Broadcasting from Brussels today, London-based Kurdish television accused Israeli intelligence, along with the CIA, of teaming up with the Turkish government to bring about Ocalan's arrest. "The incident in Berlin today is an example and result of this alliance founded on this dirty war," Mizgin Sen, a spokeswoman for the political wing of Ocalan's rebels, told the Med-TV channel. "We violently protest this action."