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The Star-Ledger · Newark, New Jersey · 9 July 1972

CP-1972-008

Explosion kills leader of Arab terrorist group

United Press International, Beirut

Explosion kills leader of Arab terrorist group — The Star-Ledger, 9 July 1972
The Star-Ledger · Newark, New Jersey · 9 July 1972

Transcribed from the clipping

“BEIRUT (UPI) — Gassan Kanafani, a leader of the extremist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was assassinated yesterday when a powerful explosion blew his car to pieces. His 14-year-old niece also was killed in the blast so powerful it split and partially melted Kanafani’s handgun, scattered bits of metal and flesh over a wide area and left a foot deep hole in a concrete parking lot. Kanafani was official spokesman and high ranking leader of the front which took ‘complete responsibility’ for the May attack in Israel’s Lod International Airport that killed 27 civilians… A statement by the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) of which the front is a member, said: ‘The martyr-fighter and hero Gassan Kanafani, one of the leaders of the PFLP and an information expert in the Arab homeland, was martyred this morning as a result of a treacherous assassination incident.’… He was married to a Dane, Anna, and had two young children — a boy and a girl… The girl who died, Lamice Fayez, was the daughter of Kanafani’s sister and had been visiting the Kanafani’s with her mother at the time.”

Photograph caption

“Gassan Kanafani, Palestinian guerrilla leader killed by a bomb in Beirut, Lebanon” · Associated Press Wirephoto

Context added by this archive

The hardest headline of the five this archive holds for the same killing. Set beside the Anchorage Daily Times of two days later, the range runs from artist to terrorist over one man in one week. This version spells him Gassan and, like the other United Press copy here, does not mention that he wrote novels.

Cite this item

"Explosion kills leader of Arab terrorist group," The Star-Ledger, 9 July 1972. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1972-008. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1972-008

Elsewhere in the archive

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-1972-008.

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