← Covering Palestine

Democrat and Chronicle · Rochester, New York · 9 July 1972

CP-1972-013

Bomb Kills Leader, Arabs Vow Revenge

The Associated Press, Beirut

Bomb Kills Leader, Arabs Vow Revenge — Democrat and Chronicle, 9 July 1972
Democrat and Chronicle · Rochester, New York · 9 July 1972

Transcribed from the clipping

“BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine accused Israel of assassinating one of its leaders yesterday and vowed to avenge his death with ‘a most ruthless strike.’ Ghassan Kanafani, 36, was killed by an explosion that demolished his sports car after he turned on the ignition outside his suburban Beirut apartment. His niece, Lamis Ndjim, 15, also was killed in the blast.… Kanafani, the Front’s ‘information commissar’ or spokesman and member of its Politburo, announced the Front’s responsibility for the Tel Aviv airport massacre May 30, in which three Japanese gunmen, trained by the Front, killed 28 persons, and wounded scores more… Kanafani, editor of the leftist weekly Al Hadaf, was well known in the Middle East as an author of books, short stories and poems, many of them about the plight of the Palestinians. One collection of stories has been translated into Hebrew.… A military demolition expert estimated that about 10 pounds of dynamite was wired in the exhaust pipe of the brown Austin 1100 car and went off when Kanafani started the car at 11 a.m.… Kanafani, a slight, personable intellectual who chain-smoked and carried a revolver, was born in Acre, Palestine, in 1936, but the family moved to Lebanon after the 1948 war. He was graduated from Damascus University in Syria and taught in Kuwait turning to Beirut to become a journalist and join the front. He is survived by his mother, his Danish widow Annie and three children.… Leila Khaled, the woman hijacker who failed in an attempt at the same time to hijack an Israeli airliner was a close friend of Kanafani. She reported to be in Berlin.”

Photograph caption

“GHASSAN KANAFANI”

Context added by this archive

The tenth American printing of this killing held here. It carries the fullest life: born in Acre in 1936, the family leaving for Lebanon after the 1948 war, Damascus University, teaching in Kuwait, then Beirut and journalism. He was eleven or twelve when they left. It also gives the fifteen-year-old girl who died beside him a fourth spelling. Across the ten printings she is Lamiss Nejim, Lamice Fayez, Lamis Najem and here Lamis Ndjim, and her age is given as fourteen, fifteen and nineteen. Ten American newspapers reported her death in one week and could not agree what she was called.

Cite this item

"Bomb Kills Leader, Arabs Vow Revenge," Democrat and Chronicle, 9 July 1972. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1972-013. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1972-013

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-1972-013.

See it in the archive reel · Full text of every clipping · Dataset