takings against Israel. Similar to the Mossad letter-bomb campaign, dozens of letter bombs were sent from Amsterdam to Israeli diplomatic posts around the world in September and October 1972. One such attack killed Ami Shachori, an Israeli Agricultural Counselor in Britain. Attempted assassination of Golda Meir in Rome A terrorist operation was planned by Black September when it learned that Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir would be travelling to Rome to meet with Pope Paul VI in January 1973. The planned visit was placed under a regimen of strict secrecy in Israel, and news of the upcoming visit was probably leaked by a pro-Palestinian priest in the Vatican Secretariat of State. Black September commander Ali Hassan Salameh began planning a missile attack against Meir's plane as it arrived in Rome. Salameh's goal was to kill not only Meir, but also key cabinet ministers and senior Mossad officers accompanying her. At the time, Salameh was negotiating with the Soviet Union, asking for safe haven, and he hoped that by the time Israel recovered from this blow, he and his men would be in the Soviet Union and out of Israel's reach. Black September smuggled several shoulder-launched Strela 2 missiles to Bari, Italy, from Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, by boat. The missiles were then smuggled to Rome and positioned around Fiumicino Airport shortly before Meir's arrival. To divert Mossad's vigilance away from Rome in the run-up to the attack, Salameh planned a terrorist attack on the Israeli embassy in Bangkok, Thailand. On December 28, 1972, four Black September members took over the Israeli embassy in Bangkok, holding 12 hostages. They raised the PLO flag over the building, and threatened to kill the hostages unless 36 PLO prisoners were released. The building was surrounded by Thai troops and police. The option of a rescue operation was considered in Israel but ruled out. A rescue operation was considered a logistical impossibility, and it was also thought that as the embassy was in busy central Bangkok, the Thai government would never allow the possibility of a shootout to occur. Though their demands were not met, negotiations secured the release of all the hostages and the Black September militants were given safe passage to Cairo. Mossad found out about the plan to assassinate Golda Meir on January 14, 1973, when a local volunteer informed Mossad that he had handled two telephone calls from a payphone in an apartment