TERRORISTS: Closing In on an Elusive Enemy

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Officials believe the terrorists, though crippled, are far from neutralized. Some 75 hard-core urban guerrillas are still at large, and intelligence reports indicate that a number of them are slipping back into West Germany. "The danger is far from over," warns a chancellery official. "The terrorists are bound to hit again and hit hard."

In Italy a spate of bombings in several cities confirmed that terrorists there were still on the loose. A 46-year-old foreman at the Lancia automobile plant in Turin was fatally wounded by Red Brigades assassins. Next day, Ippolito Bestonso, 66, an Alfa Romeo executive, was "kneecapped" outside his home in Milan by three youths who fired six bullets into his legs. In no hurry to flee, they followed up the shooting by handcuffing their victim and hanging a poster bearing the red star symbol of the Red Brigades around his neck.

Investigators in Rome were having no luck getting information from Corrado Alunni, 30, a prime suspect in the kidnap-murder of former Premier Aldo Moro. Alunni has brushed off every question by reciting the terrorist version of name, rank and serial number: "I consider myself a fighting Communist and a political prisoner in a state concentration camp and do not intend to collaborate with this system of justice." Even so, the probe into Alunni's recent whereabouts shed some light on the sybaritic life-style that Europe's leftist outlaws can occasionally afford. Not long before his arrest in Milan, Alunni and his paramour, Maria Zoni, had spent two blissful weeks in a $700-a-month cottage in the Calabrian resort of Tropea.