Former Argentine dictator dies

GENERAL Leopoldo F Galtieri, the former Argentinian dictator who ordered the 1982 invasion of the Falklands Islands and touched off a 10-week war, died yesterday of heart failure. He was 76.

General Galtieri was admitted on Saturday to a Buenos Aires hospital when his condition deteriorated. He had pancreatic cancer.

General Galtieri was the third of the four presidents of the 1976-1983 military junta, in which thousands of dissidents and leftists were killed. Human rights groups say as many as 30,000 were killed or disappeared during the period known as Argentina’s dirty war.