GLEN COVE, N.Y. -- Twelve shots were fired into the home of the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, police said Sunday, but no one was injured.The militant Jewish Defense League applauded the attack.
A man who called UPI Sunday said the JDL had carried out the attack Saturday night to protest the persecution of Jewish 'prisoners of conscience' in the Soviet Union.
The ambassador, Oleg Troyanovsky, was not at home at the time of the shooting, an FBI official said. He said others were in the mansion, but not were not in the sitting room where the shots were fired and apparently did not hear them.
Rabbi Meir Kahane, international chairman of the JDL, disavowed responsibility for the attack but said, 'We heartily applaud the act' and predicted an 'escalation' of such incidents.
The caller to UPI said: 'We're going to do anything we can in the future to get them (Soviet Jews) free.'
A Nassau County police spokesman said someone fired 12 shots into the sitting room of the mansion located about 16 miles east of New York City.
The spokesman said the incident occurred between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. Saturday. A guard patrolling the grounds discovered the bullet-riddled sitting room.
The FBI said the shots were probably fired from a public road about 75 yards from the stone and brick mansion. The spent bullets found in the room were being analyzed by the FBI.
Police also recovered a dozen bullet casings on the road outside the compound.
The mansion is surrounded by fences and guard dogs roam the grounds. The FBI said it was unlikely the attacker or attackers actually entered the grounds.
A spokesman at the Soviet mission in New York refused comment on the attack saying, 'We don't know all the details yet.'
In recent months, anonymous callers to UPI have claimed the JDL was responsible for the firebombing of the Egyptian Tourist office in Rockefeller Plaza and the planting of bombs on cars owned by Soviet U.N. mission officials in Manhattan.
The organization has disavowed responsibility for these and other attacks but has always added that it approves of such actions. In October, the JDL announced that it was 'somehwat pleased' by the assassination of Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat.
