Four U.S. soldiers were recovering today from wounds sustained when a carload of men hurled bombs and fired guns at a group of off-duty American servicemen in a discotheque parking lot, officials said. Authorities had no suspects and were ``intensively investigating'' the attack early Sunday outside the Confetti disco in San Pedro Sula, said a police official who spoke on condition of anonymity. U.S. Embassy spokesman Charles Barclay said no group had claimed responsibility for the attack, which occurred at about 1 a.m. in Honduras' second-largest city. Barclay, in a telephone interview, said the four soldiers wounded in the attack were hospitalized in satisfactory condition. Embassy officials refused to identify them until their families were notified. A U.S. official, speaking on condition he not be identified, said the wounded men ``were out of danger.'' He did not elaborate. The soldiers were on leave from Palmerola Air Force Base, 41 miles northeast of the capital of Tegucigalpa, and were in civilian clothes and carrying no weapons at the time of the attack, Barclay said. ``The American soldiers were on a one-day recreation trip to San Pedro Sula,'' he said. They were leaving the nightspot's parking lot in a civilian vehicle rented from a Honduran company when the attackers threw small bombs and opened fire from inside another car in the parking lot, U.S. officials said. The vehicle with the soldiers immediately sped away. ``The attackers threw explosive bombs and shot at them with small-caliber weapons,'' Barclay said. In Washington, Pentagon spokeswoman Maj. Kathy Wood said nine soldiers were attacked as they drove out of the discotheque's parking lot. She said there were 10 or 12 attackers. ``I guess if there's a hero in this, it's the driver,'' Wood said. ``He took evasive action. He drove away fast. He did things right.'' The driver's name was not available. The Confetti disco is frequented by U.S. military personnel. San Pedro Sula, is 125 miles north of the capital. The injured were taken to a hospital in San Pedro Sula and later flown to Palmerola. Maj. Wood said about 150 soldiers were on the one-day leave and that all returned to Palmerola as a precautionary measure. The United States has maintained a varying numbers of American troops in Honduras since the leftist Sandinistas seized power in neighboring Nicaragua in 1979. At least 30 American troops in Honduras have been killed or wounded in accidents or incidents of violence since the United States began joint military maneuvers with the Honduran military in 1982. Ten soldiers were injured in a helicopter crash during the deployment of about 1,500 American troops to Honduras in March following a reported incursion by Nicaraguan troops into Honduras. In August 1987, a pipe bomb exploded at a restaurant in Comayagua, 12 miles north of Palmerola, seriously injuring five U.S. soldiers and six civilians, including one American. The Honduran military said four suspects picked up in connection with that bombing told them the attack was part of a campaign directed by a ``foreign leftist organization.'' A wave of anti-American protests broke out in April following the deportation to the United States of a reputed international drug baron. Juan Ramon Matta, 43, was taken to the United States to face drug trafficking charges and questioning for the 1986 slaying in Mexico of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique Camarena. The Honduran constitution forbids the deportation of Honduran nationals. Demonstrators burned the U.S. Consulate and U.S. Information Service office in the capital to protest Matta's deportation and the U.S. military presence in Honduras. The violence prompted the government to temporarily impose a state of emergency restricting civil liberties.
