BEIRUT: An explosion in southern Lebanon yesterday killed a senior Fatah official and three of his bodyguards as they were leaving a Palestinian refugee camp.
The blast, apparently from a roadside bomb, struck a two-car convoy carrying Fatah’s Kamal Madhat as they left the Mieh Mieh camp near the southern port city of Sidon, killing Madhat and the bodyguards, Lebanese and Palestinian security officials said. A fourth bodyguard was wounded.
Madhat’s car was completely gutted in the explosion that left a 16 feet wide crater, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. The vehicle was thrown off the road into a valley.
Madhat, 55, was visiting the Mieh Mieh camp to offer condolences to families of two Fatah members who were killed Saturday in a gunfight in a personal dispute in the camp.
The blast was heard across Sidon. Witnesses said pieces of torn flesh were scattered near the bomb site, as ambulances rushed to evacuate the victims.
The Mieh Mieh camp and the nearby Ein Al-Hilweh camp are mainly controlled by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ mainstream Fatah group.
Madhat was a military, political and security aide to Abbas Zaki, a close aide to Abbas and the top Palestinian official in the country. Zaki described the killing as “cowardly.”
Madhat also served as a personal bodyguard to the late PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat in Beirut in the 1980s. No one claimed responsibility for the bombing, and Lebanese authorities released no official statements. It was not immediately known if Zaki could have been the target, since he had left the camp only a few hours earlier. It was also unclear if the blast was related to a power struggle among Fatah members in Lebanon.
