Bomb in car kills Arab guerrilla chief

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BEIRUT (UPI) — Ghassan Kanafani, 34, official spokesman for the extremist Arab guerrilla organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was killed today in a powerful explosion that literally blew him and his car to bits.

Police sources said a bomb apparently went off when Kanafani got into his automobile parked in the ground floor of his apartment building in the Hazmieh suburb of Beirut. Kanafani’s 14-year-old niece, Lamice Fayez, also was killed in the blast that shattered windows in the four-story modern building and blasted a foot-deep hole in the concrete garage floor.

A statement issued by the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Oorganization (PLO), of which the Front is a member, said “the martyr-fighter and hero Ghassan 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.” The “assassins” were not identified.

But the Front vowed to avenge Kanafani in a manner “most cruel and most painful.” “All comrades of the martyr can only take an oath on his noble blood to take revenge against all who prepared this operation,” a Front statement said.

“The Popular Front announces...its reply to the enemy this time will be most cruel and most painful...it will be comparable in size to the tragedy that has struck his friends.” (While the “enemy” was not specifically identified, the term is usually used by the Arab guerrillas in reference to Israel.

Arabs had expected some retaliation for the Lod airport massacre of May 30 in which 28 persons were killed and nearly 80 wounded by three Japanese terrorists said to be working for the PFLP.) 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.

How this transcription was made

Masthead not readable on the scan. The label on the slide read: [masthead not on clipping] — The clipping is a trimmed two-column cut with no masthead, folio line or dateline rule visible. Nothing on the page carries a date. The body says Kanafani “was killed today,” and the Lod airport attack is dated “May 30” in the text, which is consistent with a July 1972 printing, but I could not confirm 8 July 1972 or the paper from the page itself. Date and paper are Maria’s label only. — Complete as clipped. The left column breaks mid-sentence at “treacherous assassination” and resumes at the top of the right column with “incident.” The right column ends at “were unhurt.” A further headline begins below the cut and is not part of this article.

Cite this clipping

"Bomb in car kills Arab guerrilla chief," (newspaper unidentified), 8 July 1972. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1972-041. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1972-041