George Habash, a long-time rival of Yasser Arafat who led the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s second-largest faction which pioneered aeroplane hijackings, died today in Jordan. He was 81.

Abul Abbas, the Palestinian mastermind of the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro passenger ship in which an American tourist was killed, has died in US custody in Iraq.

The leader of a small PLO faction, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was killed today by shells fired from Israeli tanks, Palestinian doctors and witnesses said.