Senior Fatah official Khamal Medhat was killed in an explosion in southern Lebanon on Monday morning. Four others were killed as well, two of them Medhat's bodyguards. The blast appears to have been an assassination targeting Medhat, although the bomb could have been meant for Abbas Zaki, who is close to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Madhat was a military, political and security aide to Zaki, who had left the area only a few hours earlier. Medhat was Fatah's most senior intelligence official during the 1980s and early 1990s. The explosion took place at the entrance to the Miyeh Miyeh camp near the city of Sidon. Miyeh Miyeh is one of many camp cities built in Lebanon for descendants of Arabs who fled Israel during the 1948 War of Independence. A Fatah officer was killed in Miyeh Miyeh earlier in the week in what Lebanese officials said were clashes between rival clans. Other sources said the clashes were between members of Fatah and members of rival Islamic groups. Abbas, the head of Fatah, called the explosion a “terrorist crime.” "This crime would never break our people's determination to achieve their national goals in the right of return, self-determination and the establishment of our state with holy Jerusalem as its capital,” Abbas announced.
