CLAMART, France, 30 October 2004 — Yasser Arafat, suffering from a mystery illness, was flown to France yesterday and was rushed to a military hospital where doctors, including specialists in blood disorders, immediately began examining the Palestinian leader.

The health crisis has brought the 75-year-old Arafat out of his sandbagged headquarters compound in the West Bank town of Ramallah for the first time in nearly three years. He has been sick for the past two weeks and blood tests have revealed he has a low platelet count — a possible symptom of leukemia or other cancers or a number of other maladies.

Arafat arrived on a French military jet at an airfield southwest of Paris and was taken by helicopter to the nearby Hopital d’Instruction des Armees de Percy, landing on a rooftop helipad.

Paramedics wheeled Arafat, lying covered with blankets, in a gurney from the roof into the hospital. His wife, Suha, was at his side.

Specialists at the Percy hospital’s state-of-the-art hematology clinic — where patients ailing from blood disorders are treated — were conducting tests on Arafat, the French Defense Ministry said.

“He’s already in his room surrounded by his doctors who have started examining him,” said Leila Shahid, the Palestinian envoy to Paris. “He arrived conscious, smiling — happy to be in France.”

Doctors were likely to need at least several days before issuing any kind of diagnosis, she said. Palestinian Civil Affairs Minister Jamil Tarifi, who was on the plane with Arafat, said his condition was “good, thank God.”

“He was normal,” Tarifi said.

A contingent of around 18 Palestinian officials flew in with Arafat, including Mohammed Dahlan, the former security chief in Gaza, and Mohammed Rashid, Arafat’s personal financial adviser, as well as chief of staff Ramzi Khoury and top aide Nabil Abu Rudeinah.

During Arafat’s illness, Palestinian officials have blamed the flu and gallstones. But on Wednesday, he took a turn for the worse — collapsing and briefly losing consciousness — and doctors who rushed in admitted they didn’t know what was the cause of the low platelet count. On Thursday, Arafat’s personal physician, Dr. Ashraf Kurdi, ruled out leukemia. But an Arafat confidant, Dr. Ahmed Tibi, said yesterday that “at this point, no possibility has been eliminated.”

Platelets are blood components that aid in clotting. A low count can be caused by many medical problems, including bleeding ulcers, colitis, leukemia and lymphoma, liver disease, lupus and chickenpox.

Hours earlier, Arafat had a somber departure from his Ramallah headquarters, seen off by a few hundred loyalists gathered on a rain-slicked tarmac. At daybreak, Arafat, wearing a gray fur hat and an olive-colored jacket, was helped into a Jordanian military helicopter.

He looked pale and jaundiced, but tried to smile as loyalists whistled and chanted, “With our spirit and our blood, we will redeem you, Abu Ammar,” using his nom de guerre.

“I will be back soon, God willing. I’ll see you soon,” Arafat told aides during a stopover at a Jordanian military base. From the base he boarded the military plane dispatched by President Jacques Chirac to bring him to Paris.