(newspaper unidentified) · 10 October 1981
CP-1981-030
PLO's information chief killed in his bed in Rome
Transcribed from the clipping
ROME, Italy (UPI) — The information chief of the Palestine Liberation Organization was killed Friday when a bomb exploded under his bed in one of Rome's most luxurious hotels. Police said it was a highly professional assassination. Majed Abu Sharar, chief of the PLO's public relations department, died when the bomb went off shortly before 1 a.m. (8 p.m.
EDT Thursday) in his room on the fourth floor of the Flora hotel. A PLO official blamed Israel for the attack, calling Abu Sharar a victim of the “homicidal madness of Israeli terrorists.”
However, a hard-line Palestinian group in Beirut claimed responsibility for the assassination, saying it killed Abu Sharar because he had “diverged” from the radical line and had become too moderate.
The bomb, placed beneath his bed, started a fire that burned Abu Sharar's corpse beyond recognition and forced scores of tourists and other hotel guests to flee their rooms in nightclothes. Police at first theorized Abu Sharar may have been preparing the bomb for a terrorist attack and that it had exploded prematurely.
A bomb blast on Thursday damaged an Israeli tourist office only two blocks from the Flora hotel. However, fire brigade experts said later they found evidence the bomb was rigged under Abu Sharar's bed. Al Assifa, a pro-Syrian guerrilla group, telephoned news agencies in Beirut and Rome to claim responsibility for the killing.
How this transcription was made
Masthead not readable on the scan. The label on the slide read: [no masthead on clipping] — Single two-column clipping with a one-column portrait photograph of Abu Sharar set into the left column, read at 7x-8x. The whole article is transcribed. No masthead, date line or page number; the paper and date rest on Maria's slide label, supported by "killed Friday" and the EDT conversion "(8 p.m. EDT Thursday)."
Cite this clipping
"PLO's information chief killed in his bed in Rome," (newspaper unidentified), 10 October 1981. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1981-030. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1981-030
More from (newspaper unidentified)
- Kaiser Wilhelm's Trip to Palestine(newspaper unidentified) · 9 April 1898
- States the Arab Point of View Concerning Palestine(newspaper unidentified) · 1 January 1946
- Forcing Palestine to Become a World Problem(newspaper unidentified) · 1 January 1947
- Arab Terrorist Spokesman Killed As Auto Explodes(newspaper unidentified) · 8 July 1972
- Bomb in car kills Arab guerrilla chief(newspaper unidentified) · 8 July 1972
- Arab Who Claimed Massacre Credit Dies(newspaper unidentified) · 8 July 1972
- 57 more from this paper in the full text →
More from the 1980s
- Bedouin Member of the Israeli Parliament Is Shot to Death in JerusalemThe New York Times · 13 January 1981
- West Bank to have new Jewish outpostsThe Register-Guard · 26 January 1981
- Begin Gets Parliamentary OK For 3 West Bank SettlementsThe Town Talk · 27 January 1981
- Palestinian doctor sentenced as Soviet spySan Antonio Express News · 1 February 1981
- Israel seizes land to add to settlementThe Baltimore Sun · 9 February 1981
- Israel steps up its claims on Occupied West Bank landThe Miami Herald · 11 February 1981
- All 527 clippings from the 1980s →
Last updated 2 November 2026
This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1724 to 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.
The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the news agency that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. A city here is where the newspaper was published, not where the story came from, and on most records it was taken from the masthead.
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-1981-030.
Everything printed in 1981 · Printed on this day · See it in the archive reel · Full text of every clipping · Dataset