Arab Militant Leader Dies In Car Explosion

United Press International, Beirut

Transcribed from the clipping

“BEIRUT (UPI) — Ghassan Kanafani, 34, official spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was killed today in an explosion in his car, police sources said. They said a bomb apparently went off as he got into the vehicle in the ground floor garage of his apartment building in the Hazmieh suburb of Beirut. Kanafani’s 14-year-old niece, Lamice Fayez, also was killed in the blast, they said. Kanafani’s Danish wife Anna and their two young children, a boy and a girl, were not with him at the time of the blast and were unhurt… Kanafani’s body was virtually blown to pieces. A hand was found on the roof of a neighboring house and policemen were gathering up the remains. The car, an Austin 1100, was unrecognizable. The biggest single piece was a battered door. The dead girl, another niece and their mother — Kanafani’s sister — were visiting the Kanafanis and had stayed overnight, neighbors said. Kanafani, an extreme leftist and a graduate of the American University of Beirut, paid several visits to Scandinavia on behalf of the PFLP. Kanafani, editor of the magazine Al Hadaf, issued statements in the name of the front, including one in May claiming responsibility for the Tel Aviv airport massacre in which 28 persons were killed and scores injured.”

Context added by this archive

The United Press version. It gives his age as 34 and the niece as Lamice Fayez, 14. It calls him an editor and does not mention that he wrote novels. The Associated Press version, moving the same day, gives his age as 36, the niece as Lamiss Nejim, 15, and says he was well known in the Middle East as an author of books, short stories and poems. Both are in this archive.

Cite this item

"Arab Militant Leader Dies In Car Explosion," Jacksonville Journal, 8 July 1972. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1972-004. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1972-004

Elsewhere in the archive

Artist Seeking Mideast TogethernessThe Daily Progress · 3 May 1972 · the same year
Israel Accused in Assassination BlastThe Flint Journal · 9 July 1972 · the same year
Mideast guerrillas pledge to revenge chief’s bomb deathThe Sunday Oregonian · 9 July 1972 · the same year

This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American and Anglophone newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1812 to 2022. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.

The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the wire service that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. The city is derived from the masthead, not read off the clipping.

Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-1972-004.

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