Palestinian Fatah official assassinated in Sidon car bomb explosion

A senior Palestinian official with the mainstream Fatah organization  was killed on Tuesday in a car bomb explosion in the southern city of Sidon.

General Fathi Zaidan  and four others died and  two bodyguards, were injured in the blast near Ain el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp.

Zaidan, who is nicknamed  “Zorro”, is the security official with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah group who runs the  Mieh Mieh refugee camp.

The Internal Security Forces surrounded the area  and asked people to distance themselves from the blast scene to pave way for ambulances to transport the wounded.

The army’s forensics unit later arrived at the scene of the explosion and cleared away scorched body parts lying near a car in flames, said an Agence France Presse correspondent at the scene.

Ziadan’s body parts were taken to al-Hamshari and Sidon state hospitals, said the state-run National News Agency.

The head of the joint Palestinian security force in Lebanon Mounir al-Maqdah told LBCI TV that before the blast, Zaidan attended a meeting in Mieh Mieh during which he asked for increased security measures at the camp.

Fatah gunmen have recently clashed with Islamic extremists in Ain el-Hilweh, the largest of 12 refugee camps in Lebanon.

Ain el-Hilweh has become the scene of score-settling between several factions, and a breeding ground for extremist groups that have flourished on the back of the poverty afflicting the camp.