BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Assassins carrying pistols and flowers killed a French Embassy official and his pregnant wife in an assassination that may have been the work of the international terrorist 'Carlos,' French officials said Friday.
Police said the bodies of Guy Cavallot, 28, and his 25-year-old wife Caroline, seven months pregant, were found in their apartment Thursday night by friends arriving for dinner.
It was the latest in a series of terrorist attacks against diplomatic personnel in Beirut but French Embassy officials said the slaying might be related to another affair involving Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez, the notorious terrorist better known as 'Carlos.'
The victims were slain execution-style and in a grim twist, the assassins left a bouquet of flowers by the bodies, an embassy spokesman said.
The Cavallots had been expecting dinner guests Thursday night and police said the gunmen apparently gained entrance by posing as delivery men with an order of flowers.
Arriving later, the dinner guests broke down the Cavallots' door when they saw a pool of blood beneath it.
Inside, they found Mrs. Cavallot, shot twice in the head. Her husband, an administrative officer at the French embassy, lay just behind her, shot three times in the head. The bouquet of bloodied flowers lay next to them.
Police said theft was not the motive for the killing. They said the assassins apparently did not search the apartment but left immediately after the slaying, closing the door behind them.
Police said they were investigating the possibility the killings might be connected to a French television investigation into the machinegun slaying last September of French Ambassador Louis Delamare.
They said it was unlikely the killings were part of a war on diplomats that has forced several Arab embassies in Beirut to close or reduce their operations following threats and attacks on diplomatic personnel.
An aide to French Ambassador Paul Marc-Henri said 'Carlos' was suspected because Thursday was the day when three terrorists arrested in France had been due to go on trial. The trial, however, was delayed by one week.
In a letter sent to the French Embassy in the Netherlands March 1, 'Carlos' threatened reprisals against French officials unless the three terrorists were released by April 1.
