BEIRUT, Lebanon — A former Lebanese Christian warlord, who was held responsible for a 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees that for many symbolizes the outrages of Lebanon's civil war, was killed Thursday in a car bombing at his house. Three bodyguards were also killed.
Elie Hobeika, 45, led the right-wing Lebanese Forces militia, which tore through the Sabra and Chatilla Palestinian refugee camps in Muslim west Beirut 20 years ago, slaughtering hundreds of men, women and children. An Israeli military post was next to the camps.
The militia was allied with Israel, and an Israeli commission of inquiry later found that then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon — now the prime minister — was indirectly responsible for the killings.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast just off the Beirut-Damascus highway.
Meanwhile, Israeli undercover troops, wearing traditional Arab headdresses arrested a suspected Palestinian militant in a raid of a Hebron bakery Thursday. A Palestinian intelligence officer was killed in a gunbattle with Israeli troops in another West Bank town.
Also Thursday, the bodies of two Palestinians were found near the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom in the Gaza Strip. A radical PLO faction, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said the two were killed in a "heroic martyrs' operation" against Kfar Darom late Wednesday. The PFLP did not explain how the two died, and the Israeli military had no immediate comment.