Ahmad Jibril, head of Palestinian terror group PFLP-GC, dead at 83

The head of a Palestinian terrorist group in Syria and Lebanon has died at a Damascus hospital.

Ahmad Jibril, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — General Command, was 83. “He died of natural causes after suffering from illness,” son Bader Jibril says.

Jibril was a staunch supporter of Iran’s ally Syrian President Bashar Assad, and PFLP-GC members fought on the side of the Syrian regime during the civil war.

Jibril founded the PFLP-GV in 1968 as a breakaway group from the PFLP terror organization.

The group was behind several attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians, including 1970’s bombing of Swissair Flight 330 that killed 47 people; a 1970 attack on an Israeli school bus that killed 12, most of them children; 1974’s Kiryat Shmona massacre of 16 people; 1987’s ‘Night of the Gliders’ in which members of the group flew into an Israeli base and killed six soldiers.

Since the 1990s the group has not carried out any significant attacks, and it is not currently considered a serious threat to Israel. It has sometimes been blamed for sporadic rocket attacks on Israel from the north, though not ones that caused serious damage.