By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 8 September 2026

For purposes of accessibility, below is reproduced an article published two days after the infamous Cinema Rex fire during the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the most lethal post-war terrorist attack before 9/11. Inter alia, the article records contemporary evidence suggesting that the Palestinian terrorist leader Sabri al-Banna (Abu Nidal), a guest in Saddam Husayn’s Iraq, had a role in the atrocity.

Fire Raid Kills 377 in Persia

By HUGH DAVIES in Teheran

21 August 1978

The Daily Telegraph

PERSIAN security forces were searching villages near the Iraqi border last night in a manhunt ordered by the Shah after terrorists, believed to be Shia Moslem extremists, set fire to a crowded cinema, killing at least 377 people and injuring another 223.

The cinema, in the old town of Abadan, was showing a Persian nature film called “Reindeer” and most of the audience were mothers and children.

The attack was timed to have the most devastating effect at 10 o’clock on Saturday night, when more than 700 people were crammed into the auditorium.

At Meshed, which like Abadan, is a stronghold of Shia Moslems, another cinema was set on fire in the middle of Friday night by a group carrying cans of petrol, which they poured over seats and carpets. Three men were burned to death.

‘Islamic Marxists’

Hours after the Abadan disaster, a cinema in Shiraz, 200 miles east of Abadan, was wrecked by fire. No casualties were reported.

It is thought that extremists are attacking cinemas because, in the Moslem holy month of Ramadan, they represent the ultimate in transgressions of Islamic law.

Pointing the finger at the religious fanatics and what the Shah has called “Islamic Marxists”—who, according to the Government, have instigated almost two weeks of rioting in Persia—Mr Jamshid Amouzegar, Prime Minister, said: “It’s unbelievable. It seems that these people will stop at nothing.”

The fire at Abadan is thought to have been started by four men using Molotov cocktails at each corner of the Rex Cinema which quickly became an inferno.

According to people who escaped, panic broke out as the audience rushed for the exits. One report said that the doors were locked but this was officially denied last night.

Some people were burned to death. Others were trampled underfoot and many were suffocated by smoke.

The building became a mass of twisted girders and caved-in walls.

Many of the victims were burned beyond recognition. Last night 2,000 grief-stricken relatives gathered outside the local police station, many weeping and chanting in mourning.

Mass graves

Earlier, bulldozers had cut a mass grave on the outskirts of the town. There were harrowing scenes as the victims were buried.

Merchants in the bazaar gave away rolls of white cloth for shrouds.

Abadan, 450 miles south-west of Teheran, was a small village until a few years ago. Then in the oil boom, which made Persia second only to Saudi Arabia in exports of crude oil, it grew into a modern industrial town because of its strategic position on the Shatt-al-Arab waterway.

It is only four miles from the Iraqi border. Security forces were last night investigating a report that terrorists may have been assisted by the Palestinian guerrillas of Abu Nidal, the renegade Palestine Liberation Organisation man, now based in Baghdad.

Four days ago, Mr Dariush Homayoun, Persian Information Minister, said that there was firm evidence that “Palestinian extremists” were supplying large sums of money to “Leftist extremists” and the “Communists,” said to be behind the riots in Persia.

Suspects held

According to reports from Abadan a member of the cinema staff, believed to be the caretaker, was under arrest for assisting the arsonists. Another report said that two men had been held.

It seems certain that the Abadan outrage was far more calculated than the days of rioting which preceded it. Earlier evidence about the riots suggested that crowds emerging from mosques had been stirred into action by mullahs and leaders of the Shia sect.

Their religious fervour is based on anger at the Shah’s liberalisation programme, which they fear is undermining the basis of Islam, with its restrictions on entertainment, drinking and the emancipation of women.

Forty people were injured in a bomb attack on a Teheran bar a week ago, and the bomber blew himself up.

Troops and tanks

After a week of martial law in Isfahan, the 17th century capital of Persia, it was difficult to imagine, when I visited the city at the weekend, that there had been riots. Large forces of troops, together with Chieftain tanks, were on the streets to maintain order, and a rally in support of the Shah attracted at least 5,000 people.

By Saturday night, the curfew was lifted for an extra hour. But there was some tension in the air, and when I tried to take photographs of the patriotic demonstrators, I was hustled off by a policeman at bayonet point and held for an hour at a guard post.

(Grateful to Arash Behgoo for the discovery)