Cruise Of Terror

The murderous moment came during the late-afternoon languor, the time for a last cool drink before dinner or a final stretch of sun on the ship's upper deck. Suddenly, the holiday mood aboard the City of Poros, a day cruiser plying the islands in the Saronic Gulf, was shattered by grenade blasts and a fusillade of automatic-weapon fire. For about five minutes, several assailants, possibly as many as four, raked the deck of the 688-ton vessel. They then escaped, apparently by jumping overboard. The hit squad left nine people dead and 47 injured.

"We thought it was children playing with firecrackers," said Natalie Wogewoda, a 24-year-old French student who was shot in both legs. "Then we heard people screaming. Suddenly, I was nailed to the ground." Dozens of passengers tried to flee from the violence by leaping into the sea, where they were soon rescued by ships responding to an SOS signal issued by the captain of the Poros. Said the ship's owner, Antonis Kyrtatas, of the attackers: "They just came to kill."

More precisely, it appeared that the terrorists came to hijack -- and stayed to kill once their plans went awry. Three hours before the shooting began, a rental car loaded with explosives blew up in the Athens suburb where the Poros was due to dock later in the day; the two people in the car were killed. Greek police speculated that the terrorists planned to take over the vessel, bring the explosives onto the ship and turn the Poros, with 505 aboard, into a floating bomb. The gunmen on the vessel might have learned of the car explosion and decided on aimless killing instead.

One suspect was identified, from a picture taken by the ship's photographer before the rampage, as Mohammed Zozan, described by police as a 21-year-old holding a Lebanese passport. But the occupants of the demolished car could not be identified, and from the murky world of Arab terrorist factions, no convincing claim of responsibility was forthcoming.