THE family and colleagues of a fugitive Palestinian freedom fighter blamed Israel yesterday for his suspicious death in Bulgaria.

People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) member Omar Nayef Zayed was found dead in the grounds of the Palestinian embassy in Sofia yesterday morning.

Mr Zayed had taken refuge in the embassy in December after Israel demanded his extradition from Bulgaria, where he had lived since 1994.

He was imprisoned in 1986 for an attack on Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem. Following 40 days on hunger strike, he was transferred in 1990 to a Bethlehem hospital, from which he soon escaped.

Mr Zayed lived in several Arab countries before settling in Bulgaria, where he married a Bulgarian woman with whom he had three children.

His death came hours after Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov returned from a visit to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian government, with both of whom he discussed Mr Zayed’s extradition.

The Bulgarian prosecutor’s office said it had been told by the embassy of a death resulting from violence on its territory.

Prosecutor General Sotir Tsatsarov suggested that Mr Zayed had fallen from a building, claiming that he had still been alive when the ambulance arrived and had suffered no bullet wounds.

But the PFLP said that he had been shot in the head, accusing Israeli intelligence service Mossad of killing him.

“He joins the convoy of the great martyrs of our people whose lives have been taken inside and outside Palestine by the murderous zionist colonial project,” a PFLP statement said.

It also blamed Bulgaria and the Palestinian government for failing to protect Mr Zayed.

His family also called his death an “assassination,” as did Palestinian Prisoner Affairs Minister Issa Qaraqe, who also accused Mossad.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the killing and ordered an investigative committee to travel to Bulgaria immediately.

Mr Qaraqe noted that Mr Zayed had died just a day after Palestine Liberation Organisation Brigadier Ayman Jaradat was killed by unknown gunmen in the West Bank town of Jenin.