Film director dies after Jordan blast: report

DUBAI (Reuters) – Hollywood Arab film director Moustapha
Akkad has died in hospital from wounds sustained in this week’s
hotel bomb attacks in Jordan, Arab television stations said on
Friday.

One of the few Arab directors known in the West, the
Syrian-born Akkad had been staying in one of three luxury
hotels hit by suicide bombers in Amman on Wednesday, killing at
least 56 people, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya said.

His daughter was killed immediately in one of the blasts.

Akkad was executive producer of the “Halloween” horror
films and directed a 1976 English-language movie about the
Prophet Mohammad starring Anthony Quinn, “The Message.”

In his controversial epic about early Islam, Akkad faced
the challenge of shooting a movie where viewers neither see nor
hear the main character because of Islam’s ban on images of
Mohammad.

Quinn played the Prophet’s uncle Hamza.

Born in Aleppo in 1935, Akkad also directed the 1981 film
“Lion of the Desert,” in which Quinn starred as Libyan
anti-colonial fighter Omar Mukhtar.