A huge car bomb exploded at theheadquarters of the British Army of the Rhine last night,
injuring about 30 people just hours after British Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher left the West German capital.
    A British Army spokeswoman said today that seven people
were still being treated for minor injuries in hospitals in the
Moenchengladbach area, near the Rheindahlen base, after being
being hit by flying shards of glass from the blast.
    The 100-kg bomb went off outside an officers' mess at 10.30
P.M. (2130 GMT), ripping a crater half a meter (1.5 feet) deep
and three meters (nine feet) wide in the ground, and could be
heard several kilometers (miles) away, a police spokesman said.
    An anonymous caller, speaking English, telephoned the West
German domestic news agency Deutsche Presse Agentur just before
the explosion and said a bomb was about to go off at the base.
    Thatcher left Bonn early yesterday evening after talks with
with Chancellor Helmut Kohl ahead of her visit to Moscow next
week. She had flown to West Germany from talks with French
President Francois Mitterrand in Normandy earlier in the day.
    Officers of the Nato Northern Army Group, which is also
based at Rheindahlen, were holding a social dinner attended by
British and West German servicemen and their wives inside the
mess when the bomb went off.
 Reuter
