Bomb Kills PLO Official

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ROME, Italy (UPI) — The information chief of the Palestine Liberation Organization was killed Friday by 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 on Rome's tourist-famed Via Veneto. A PLO spokesman blmaed 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. Firemen quickly extinguished the blaze. 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. Abu Sharar was registered at the hotel as Abbas Zithouni, 47, an Algerian living in Beirut.

A spokesman for the PLO's Rome office conceded Zithouni was really Abu Sharar, the PLO's top information official and a member of the central committee of Al Fatah, the guerrilla group headed by Yasser Arafat. The spokesman said Sharar, in Rome for a conference of Arab journalists, carried the Algerian passport as a security precaution.

Al Assifa, a pro-Syrian guerrilla group, telephoned new agencies in Beirut and Rome to claim responsibility for the killing. “We have killed the traitor Majed Abu Sharar in Rome. He and his friends had diverged from the proper path of the Palestinian revolution and armed struggle. They represented the line of surrender,” the caller said.

“In the same way we killed Abu Sharar, we will kill all other who seek to compromise the principles of our revolution,” it said. Abu Sharar, born in a village in what is now Israel and father of three children, was known as a moderate intellectual. He was a close friend of Wael Zuaiter, a Palestine poet assassinated in Rome in 1972.

How this transcription was made

Masthead not readable on the scan. The label on the slide read: [masthead not on clipping] — Single clipping. The page also carries an unrelated Texas local item, "Kilgore Police Hunt Suspect", in the first column below this story, and the top of a display advertisement at lower right; neither is part of this record. The slide's second image is a different paper and is recorded separately. — No masthead in frame. The page carries a Texas local item ("Kilgore Police Hunt Suspect", Kilgore being about thirty miles from Tyler), which is consistent with an East Texas paper and so with Maria's label, but that is inference from the local news, not a masthead reading. — No printed date. The story says Abu Sharar "was killed Friday" and gives the time as "shortly before 1 a.m. (8 p.m. EDT Thursday)", and the Kilgore item says police searched "Friday night". Majed Abu Sharar was killed in the early hours of Friday 9 October 1981, so a Saturday 10 October publication fits, matching Maria's label. Year not printed on the clipping; the body's reference to Wael Zuaiter "assassinated in Rome in 1972" is the only year that appears. — Printed errors kept as set: "blmaed" for blamed; "telephoned new agencies" for news agencies; "we will kill all other who seek" for all others. Also as printed: "a bomb exploded under his bed" in the opening sentence, and the inconsistent "Abu Sharar" / "Sharar" on later reference.

Cite this clipping

"Bomb Kills PLO Official," (newspaper unidentified), 10 October 1981. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1981-036. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1981-036