Nassar, Longtime AP Correspondent, Dies

By: Farouk Nassar, a 42-year veteran Middle East correspondent for The Associated Press, died Monday. He was 79.

Nassar became supervisor of the newspaper?s English-language Web site after retiring from the AP in 1996.

During his AP service, Nassar covered military coups in neighboring Syria, where he started reporting for the AP.

From Damascus and later his Beirut base, his monitoring of shortwave radio broadcasts earned him wide credits for reporting the earthshaking political developments in the Middle East -- including the 1958 overthrow of the monarchy in Iraq and the 1969 takeover by military officer Moammar Gadhafi in Libya.

He was jailed several times by authorities in Syria for his reporting. He moved with his family to neighboring Lebanon in the mid-1960s.

Among the bulletins he filed during his career was the bombing of the U.S. Marine base in Beirut in 1983, an attack that killed more than 240 American service personnel.