Bombing of flight LY 444
El Al Boeing 707 · Bombing
From Rome–Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci International Airport (FCO) to Ben Gurion International Airport (TLV)
Event
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- Unknown
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
Boeing 707
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 707
- Category
- Airplane · from aircraft type
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- Unknown
- Operator
- El Al
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rome–Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci International Airport (FCO)To Ben Gurion International Airport (TLV)
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
The bombing of flight LY 444 on the Rome-Tel Aviv route, operated for the Israeli flag carrier El Al by a Boeing 707 with 140 passengers and 8 crew members (captain Yehuda Fuks), was a terrorist action perpetrated in Italian skies on 16 August 1972.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
On 19 August the two terrorists were arrested; they had told the girls that they were first Iranian, then Pakistani and finally Indian, giving them the false identities of Safai Khosrov and Gamandarian Kayhavous. In reality they are Zaid Ahmed, an Iraqi citizen, born in Baghdad on 31 July 1948, a student in Perugia and head of the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS), and Adnan Alì Hashem, a Jordanian citizen born in Irbid in 1943; on 12 February 1973 the two, having obtained provisional release, disappeared without trace.
Two other people would also be investigated as accomplices: Tarif al-Sarraw (who would turn out to be uninvolved in the events) and Omar K. Marwan, that is, the bomb-maker who allegedly physically assembled the explosive device, who immediately "went into hiding" and was never found again.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the Italian Wikipedia article “Attentato al volo LY 444” (revision 149048537, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article
Sources
Italian Wikipedia article: Attentato al volo LY 444
- Article
- Attentato al volo LY 444
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 149048537 · 2026-01-23 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q48806274
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
Where each value comes from
- Record
- it Wikipedia article "Attentato al volo LY 444" (page 6592694, revision 149048537), translated into English with AI assistance
- Date
- Wikipedia article: the date in its opening sentence (the infobox gives none to the day)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site
- Map position
- Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- Reviewed correction (2026-09-26): El Al flight LY 444 carrying 140 passengers from Rome to Tel Aviv: an airline passenger flight. The article: "operated for the Israeli flag carrier El Al by a Boeing 707 with 140 passengers and 8 crew members"
- Fatalities
- not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Ground fatalities
- not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (1)
- Wikipedia · Facts from the Italian Wikipedia article's infobox, translated into English with AI assistance, not checked against an investigation report. Independent review pending.