Assassin’s Blast Kills Palestine Extremist

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BEIRUT (UPI)—Gassan Kanafani, a leader of the extremist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was assassinated Saturday 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 a high ranking leader of the front which took “complete responsibility” for the May attack at Israel’s Lod International Airport that killed 27 civilians.

Shortly after the front announced that the three Japanese men who indiscriminately sprayed Lod Airport with bullets and handgrenades were working under PFLP orders, the group’s leaders disappeared from their usual Beirut haunts, apparently in fear of Israeli retaliation.

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.”

The organization said the incident encouraged its members to “continue on the road of revolution until victory and liberation.” Kanafani was ranked fourth or fifth in the movement, according to sources close to the PFLP. He was married to a Dane, Anna, and had two young children—a boy and a girl.

They were not near the explosion, which took place in the ground floor parking lot directly under Kanafani’s apartment in the Hazmieh suberb of Beirut. 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.

The PLO statement said “the fall of a leader will not stop the will of fighters but will only increase their capabilities to continue on the road of revolution until victory and liberation.”

How this transcription was made

Masthead not readable on the scan. The label on the slide read: [no masthead on clipping] — Single two-column scan, read in four column crops at 4.2x. — No masthead, no running head, no printed date. A sliver of a cut-off line of type sits at the very top of the scan but only the descenders survive and it cannot be read. Internal evidence supports Maria's label: the lede says Kanafani “was assassinated Saturday,” a next-day construction, and Kanafani was killed Saturday 8 July 1972, giving a Sunday 9 July paper. Date carried from Maria's label. — ['Fourth letter of “Lamice”: the glyph will not resolve at 10x–16x on this compressed scan and reads as either c or e (“Lamice” or “Lamiee”). Recorded as Lamice; flag for a check against a higher-resolution scan before this name is published.']

Cite this clipping

"Assassin’s Blast Kills Palestine Extremist," (newspaper unidentified), 9 July 1972. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1972-046. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1972-046