Ahmed Jibril, co-founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and its Syrian splinter, the PFLP General Command (PFLP-GC) and leader of a pro-Syrian faction in the Palestinian Authority, died Wednesday at a hospital in Damascus, Israel’s Kan News public broadcaster reported.
Jibril, whose nom de guerre was Abu Jihad, was 83 years old.
Ahmed Jibril, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC) has died in Damascus at the age of 83. He was a supporter of the Assad regime during the Syrian Civil War. pic.twitter.com/rZpojYJBt2
— Anna Ahronheim (@AAhronheim)
For more than half a century, Jibril supported the regime of Syria’s President Bashar Assad, including during the recent Syrian civil war when PFLP forces helped the government troops fight opposition forces.
His forces also joined Syrian regime forces in a siege of the Palestinian-populated Yarmouk Camp (2013-2018) and helped the regime starve to death at least 204 Palestinian-Syrian Arabs.
Jibril was the driving force behind the 1970 bombing of Swissair Flight 330 that killed 47 people; a 1970 attack on an Israeli school bus that killed 12 — most of them children — and the 1974 Kiryat Shmona massacre of 16 people. In addition, he was known for his 1985 prisoners swap deal with Israel.
According to Iran International (English), Iran has provided ongoing support to Jibril’s terror group.
: Ahmed Jibril, leader and founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), passed away at the age of 83 in a hospital in Damascus, KAN reported on Wednesday. Through the years has provided support to PFLP-GC. pic.twitter.com/AJOzpUCSwL
— Iran International English (@IranIntl_En)
Jibril was born in 1938 in a town near Jaffa (Yazur) in what was British Mandatory Palestine. His family subsequently moved to Syria, where he was raised and served in the military between 1956-1958. After being expelled from the military as a Communist he founded the Palestinian Liberation Front the next year. Less than a decade later, in 1967 he joined with George Habash to found the PFLP, an armed Arab terrorist group, albeit on the extreme left. One year later he founded the PFLP-GC.
All his life, Jibril opposed negotiations with the Israeli government and believed that “Palestine” could be liberated only via military attacks.