The body of Amin al-Hindi, a senior Palestinian who was involved in the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre, was buried in Gaza City yesterday, an AFP correspondent said.

Mr Hindi, who died in Amman late on Tuesday at the age of 70, was the last living Palestinian to be linked to the deadly attack that killed 11 Israeli athletes.

Thousands of mourners joined the funeral procession which led from the family home in Gaza’s Al-Rimal neighbourhood to the city’s Katiba mosque.

Hindi was a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s Fatah party and also headed intelligence services under the late Yasser Arafat.

Several leaders from the Fatah Central Committee and the Fatah Revolutionary Council attended the funeral in the Gaza Strip, which is run by Fatah’s radical Islamist rivals, Hamas.

Hamas was represented at the funeral by Ahmad Yussuf, an adviser to prime minister Ismail Haniya.

The Fatah officials arrived in Gaza after escorting the body from the West Bank city of Ramallah, where top Palestinian officials, including President Mahmud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, had attended a military funeral for Hindi.

Mr Hindi died on Tuesday night in Amman after being treated for cancer, the Palestinian ambassador to Amman, Atallah Kheiry, said in the Jordanian capital.

“Hindi was moved to the King Hussein Medical Centre in Amman six months ago after cancer treatment, and doctors removed a large part of his liver,” Mr Kheiry said.

“After that he went into a coma and died on Tuesday night.”

Mr Hindi was the last living Palestinian who was linked to the Munich attacks following the death last month of Abu Daoud, who planned the deadly Munich attack.

Mr Daoud, whose real name was Mohammed Daoud Odeh, died in Damascus on July 3. He was 73 and best known for organising the Munich attack which he claimed responsibility for in his 1999 book Palestine, from Jerusalem to Munich.