BEIRUT, May 20: A bomb killed the son of Palestinian guerilla leader Ahmed Jibril in Beirut on Monday, ripping through a car and tearing him to shreds in an assassination that hardline groups blamed on Israel.

“It was Jihad, God rest his soul,” an official of Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) said at the site of the blast, referring to Mohammad Jihad Ahmed Jibril.

The Damascus office of Jibril’s group — which opposes Yasser Arafat for negotiating a peace with Israel under the 1993 Oslo accords — also confirmed the dead man was his son. Jihad Jibril was born in 1961 and had two children.

A PFLP-GC official in Beirut said the dead man had run its military operations in Lebanon and elsewhere, and Ahmed Jibril said that role put his son’s life in danger long ago.

“The Mossad managed to kill Jihad this time,” Jibril said while talking to reporters, referring to Israeli intelligence. “The Israeli enemy knows he was a serious field commander. He became a martyr like so many who have fallen defending the Palestinian cause.”

The younger Jibril was part of the PFLP-GC’s military leadership, and officials of the group said he planned one of its most daring attacks — a 1987 raid on the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona in which guerillas killed six soldiers after floating over from Lebanon on a powered hang glider.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing in Beirut, a city which became notorious for car-bomb assassinations during Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil

war. Lebanese authorities said they had arrested three people in connection with the case. They did not identify the detainees.

Jibril’s group was quick to point the finger at Israel.

“Israel is behind any bomb attack on any Lebanese, Arab or Palestinian,” Abu Rushdi, a local PFLP-GC official, said shortly after the blast.

“Our response is to continue our struggle against Israel.”

An aide to Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer denied the accusations. “Israel had no connection to it,” said Yarden Vatikay.

The explosion in Beirut’s Mar Elias district scattered the younger Jibril’s limbs and innards around the twisted, blood-spattered wreck of the car.

Security sources said the bomb had been placed under the driver’s seat. After the explosion, the seat was found dozens of metres from the car.

Officials of other groups, including Arafat’s Fatah and the Hamas, echoed Jibril’s charge.

“We see the clear fingerprints of the Zionists in this assassination which...signals a return to renewed Zionist attempts to shake the security of Lebanon,” a statement from the Hezbollah said.

The PFLP-GC later hinted it would launch attacks on Israel to avenge Jibril’s death, saying in a statement: “By the blood of the martyr Mohammad Jihad Jibril...and the sacred land that will embrace his remains, we will take revenge and the consequences will be enormous and terrible.”

Jibril is to be buried in Damascus on Wednesday.

The Damascus-based PFLP-GC is a part of an alliance of radical Palestinian factions based in Syria.

Once famed for its guerilla operations, it has been largely on the sidelines of the Palestinian uprising against Israel that erupted in 2000.—Reuters