Beirut
Abu Nidal, one of the world's most feared terrorists, is reported to have been arrested after crossing into Egypt from Libya.
The Palestinian, infamous for years of international terrorist attacks, is said to be suffering from cancer.
The US State Department lists Nidal's group as ''the most dangerous terrorist organisation in existence'' - and it is blamed for killing hundreds of people in 20 countries since 1973.
The Lebanese newspaper An Nahar quoted Palestinian sources as saying Abu Nidal, aged in his sixties, had been caught in Egypt more than a month ago and was currently in a Cairo hospital, amid tight security, fighting for his life.
Egyptian authorities seized Nidal after staking out some of his followers, who were carrying false passports - unaware of the surveillance - and waiting for him in Cairo ''to move him to another place to receive treatment,'' a source told An Nahar. Nidal reportedly is in such an advanced stage of cancer that Libyan hospitals were not equipped to treat him, the Arab press reported.
The Egyptian government informed Washington of his capture, but US officials appeared to have little other information, sources told the Los Angeles Times.
There was no confirmation from Washington of Nidal's capture. Nidal, a Palestinian extremist on the run for more than two decades, had made Libya the headquarters for his terror regime for the past several years.
He has been linked to deadly terrorist attacks - in 20 countries - in which at least 300 people were killed and another 650 injured.
Nidal, whose name means ''Father of Struggle'', heads the Fatah Revolutionary Council, a radical splinter group of PLO chief Yasser Arafat's Fatah group.
Nidal split from the PLO in 1974, when the PLO first began toying with the idea of working through political means to secure a Palestinian homeland. Arafat is now president of the Palestinian Authority, which controls portions of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Nidal, whose real name is Sabri Banna, is considered one of Arafat's main foes, and both have put death sentences on the other's head.
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