Abu Nidal may have run low on friends and followers, but to the end the notorious guerrilla chief clung onto a haul of weapons fit for a small team of assassins. Booby-trapped suitcases, rifles, pistols fitted with silencers and what appeared to be explosives were found by Iraqi officials at the Baghdad apartment where one of the world's most-wanted men spent his final days.

Abu Nidal, 65, put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger when Iraqi officers came to arrest him for entering the country illegally, Iraq's intelligence chief said as he recounted the last moments of the Palestinian who waged a bloody guerrilla war in the 1970s and 1980s.

After rushing Abu Nidal to hospital where he died from wounds by a single shot that pierced his skull, security men found an array of arms and forged passports in his apartment, intelligence chief Taher Jaleel al-Haboush said.

At a news conference, Haboush produced pictures of the weapons.

They showed eight old suitcases which the intelligence chief said were booby-trapped. Also on show were two handguns with silencers, three assault rifles, at least seven other guns and what looked like four bags of explosives.

A number of forged passports and identity cards from several Arab and other countries were also shown.

Haboush said coded messages from a country which he refused to name were decoded and revealed that the guerrilla was on the payroll of that country. Abu Nidal was dubbed "A Gun for Hire" in a biography with the same title.

Abu Nidal, who was born Sabri al-Bana, was a sworn enemy of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and any Palestinian leader who sought accommodation with Israel.

He was the leader of the Fatah Revolutionary Council blamed for attacks in 20 countries in which hundreds of people were killed and wounded.

Abu Nidal was accused of masterminding gun and grenade attacks on Israeli and U.S. airline check-in desks, killing 19 people and injuring more than 100, in Rome and Vienna in December 1985.

He was also accused of assassinating Arafat's right-hand man Salah Khalaf, Abu Ayyad, in the early 1990s.

In a new charge, an estranged comrade said in comments published on Tuesday that Abu Nidal was behind a 1986 Berlin night club bombing which killed two Americans. Germany partly blamed Libya, prompting U.S. air strikes there.

Abu Nidal's group was also held responsible for a gun attack in June 1982 that seriously wounded Israel's ambassador in London, Shlomo Argov. The shooting prompted Israel's invasion of Lebanon days later to root out Palestinian guerrilla groups.

PHOTO CAPTION

Taher Jaleel al-Hboush, head of the Iraqi intelligence service, holds up photographs of Abu Nidal, leader of the Fatah-Revolutionary Council during a news conference in Baghdad August 21, 2002. Abu Nidal, 65, put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger when Iraqi officers came to arrest him for entering the country illegally, al-Hboush said. (Faleh Kheiber/Reuters)