World Notes Middle East

Zafir Masri, 44, obviously suspected nothing as he strolled from his home to the municipal offices in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Nablus on Sunday. Then, as the prominent Palestinian moderate and mayor stopped to chat with a local businessman, murder struck. At least one assassin walked up behind Masri and shot him three times in the back with a 7.65-mm pistol. Two of the bullets lodged in his heart. The unidentified hitman fled in the direction of the town's central market-place. Masri died shortly afterward.

The killing came as a blow to Israel's national unity government, which, in ( a pilot project, had named Masri as the West Bank's only Arab mayor, after three years of military administration ended in the city four months ago. Both Israel and neighboring Jordan strongly condemned the murder, as did a spokesman for Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat. In the Syrian capital of Damascus, the P.L.O. faction known as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the shooting. In Paris, however, a telephone caller to a Western news agency claimed responsibility for the shadowy terrorist organization headed by the notorious Abu Nidal.