Arafat dies at 75

Yasser Arafat, the guerilla icon turned Nobel Peace Prize winner who ended up isolated and locked in renewed conflict with Israel, died yesterday, his dream of a Palestinian state unfulfilled. He was 75.

The announcement of the death of the Palestinian president, who symbolised his people's decades-old struggle for an independent homeland, ended days of confusion over his fate as he lay comatose behind a shroud of secrecy in a Paris hospital.

Mr Arafat's passing stirred hopes for reviving Middle East peacemaking for the first time in years. He had been reviled by Israel as a "master terrorist" and shunned by Washington as an "obstacle to peace".

But fears remained of a succession fight that could thrust the Palestinian territories into chaos and push the region into deeper crisis.

With Mr Arafat having indicated no preferred successor, Palestinians quickly installed a collective leadership, handing top positions to moderates and hardliners alike in a bid to avoid a power vacuum.

In towns and refugee camps across the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, tens of thousands of Palestinians poured into the streets with wails of grief and volleys of gunfire.

"Our father is dead," construction worker Fathi Abu Adnan said in Gaza City, where youths burned tyres, sending up plumes of black smoke as Koranic verses blared from loudspeakers.

Some mourners bore portraits of Mr Arafat, for decades one of the world's most recognisable leaders. Short and balding, his stubbled face framed by a chequered black-and-white headdress, he had usually appeared in public in military fatigues and with a pistol strapped to his waist.

But as Palestinians mourned, many Israelis heaped bitterness on the man they accused of orchestrating a four-year-old intifada, or uprising, and for militant attacks that have killed hundreds of their people.

At an army airfield outside Paris, Mr Arafat's wife Suha wept as a French honour guard loaded his flag-draped casket onto a plane bound for Cairo for his funeral today attended by leaders from around the world.

With condolences for Mr Arafat's death pouring in from across the globe, Palestinian officials urged Israel to revive stalled talks, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said it could be a "turning point" for peace if Mr Arafat's successors ended violence.

"The death of Yasser Arafat is a significant moment in Palestinians' history," US President George W. Bush said in a statement. "We hope that the future will bring peace and the fulfilment of the aspirations for an independent democratic Palestine that is at peace with its neighbours."

Israel, however, moved quickly to seal off the West Bank and Gaza Strip from the Jewish state, fearing an explosion of violent Palestinian protest.

The militant Islamic group Hamas, sworn to Israel's destruction and the driving force behind a campaign of suicide bombings, vowed to keep up attacks against the "Zionist enemy". Within hours of Mr Arafat's death, militants from his Fatah movement attacked a Jewish settlement in Gaza in what they said signalled the start of a new round of clashes with Israel. Soldiers killed three Palestinians, at least two of them gunmen. Troops shot dead another Palestinian in stone-throwing confrontations in the West Bank, medics said.

Mr Arafat died after suffering a brain haemorrhage on Tuesday at the Paris hospital where he was flown on October 29 from the West Bank headquarters where he had been penned by Israel for more than two and a half years. Details of his illness remain a mystery.

Mr Arafat's funeral was to be held at Cairo's airport followed by burial at his shell-shattered headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, which was to be turned into a shrine. Under Palestinian law, Mr Arafat was replaced as caretaker president of the Palestinian Authority by parliamentary speaker Rawhi Fattouh, who must organise elections within 60 days.

Mahmoud Abbas, a reform-minded former prime minister, was elected to succeed him as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the Palestinians' highest decision-making body.

Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie, another leading moderate, was expected to remain in charge of day-to-day governing.

By contrast, Farouk Kaddoumi, an exiled hardliner, was named to take over as head of Fatah, the dominant Palestinian faction.

The division of responsibilities among veterans without clear power bases of their own added to concern that chaos could imperil any move for renewed peacemaking with Israel. Undeterred by the reshuffling of the Palestinian leadership following the death of his longtime foe, Mr Sharon vowed to push ahead with an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority declared a 40-day mourning period.

There was no sorrow, however, among Israeli officials. Justice Minister Yosef Lapid spoke of a "deep hatred for a man who made terrorism a method in the world".

Former US President Bill Clinton, whose last-ditch efforts failed to broker a final settlement before Israeli-Palestinian violence erupted in 2000, voiced regret that Mr Arafat had "missed the opportunity to bring that nation into being".

French President Jacques Chirac called Mr Arafat "a man of courage and conviction" and urged the international community to persevere with efforts to bring peace to the Middle East.