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‘Where can you hide from pollution?’: cancer rises 30% in Beirut as diesel generators poison city

Lebanon’s economy and electricity system are broken and much power is now generated locally, with devastating effects on air quality and health

S mog hangs over Beirut most days, a brownish cloud that darkens the city’s skyline of minarets and concrete towers. An estimated 8,000 diesel generators have been powering Lebanese cities since the nation’s economic collapse in 2019. The generators can be heard, smelled and seen on the streets, but their worst impact is on the air the city’s inhabitants are forced to breathe.

New research, to be published by scientists at American University of Beirut (AUB), has found that the Lebanese capital’s over-reliance on the diesel generators in the past five years has directly doubled the risk of developing cancer. Rates of positive diagnosis, oncologists say, are shooting up.

• A common condition

The human toll of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is huge and rising. These illnesses end the lives of approximately 41 million of the 56 million people who die every year – and three quarters of them are in the developing world.

NCDs are simply that; unlike, say, a virus, you can’t catch them. Instead, they are caused by a combination of genetic, physiological, environmental and behavioural factors. The main types are cancers, chronic respiratory illnesses, diabetes and cardiovascular disease – heart attacks and stroke. Approximately 80% are preventable, and all are on the rise, spreading inexorably around the world as ageing populations and lifestyles pushed by economic growth and urbanisation make being unhealthy a global phenomenon.

NCDs, once seen as illnesses of the wealthy, now have a grip on the poor. Disease, disability and death are perfectly designed to create and widen inequality – and being poor makes it less likely you will be diagnosed accurately or treated.

Investment in tackling these common and chronic conditions that kill 71% of us is incredibly low, while the cost to families, economies and communities is staggeringly high.

In low-income countries NCDs – typically slow and debilitating illnesses – are seeing a fraction of the money needed being invested or donated. Attention remains focused on the threats from communicable diseases, yet cancer death rates have long sped past the death toll from malaria, TB and HIV/Aids combined.

'A common condition' is a Guardian series reporting on NCDs in the developing world: their prevalence, the solutions, the causes and consequences, telling the stories of people living with these illnesses.

Tracy McVeigh, editor

“The results are alarming,” says Najat Saliba, an atmospheric chemist who led the study. In the area of Makassed, one of the more densely populated parts of Beirut tested, levels of pollution from fine particulates – that is, less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter (PM2.5) – peaked at 60 micrograms a cubic metre, four times the 15 mcg/m³ level the World Health Organization says people should be not exposed to for more than 3-4 days a year.

Since 2017, the last time AUB took these measurements, the level of carcinogenic pollutants emitted into the atmosphere has doubled across three areas of Beirut. Saliba says calculations suggest cancer risk will have risen by approximately 50%.

“It’s directly related,” she says. “We calculate the cancer risk based on the carcinogen materials emitted from diesel generators, some of which are classified as category 1A carcinogens .”

Generators used to fill a three-hour gap in national grid provision. Then, in 2019, one of the world’s most catastrophic economic collapses since the mid-19th century began in Lebanon. Within months the state energy grid came close to collapse and the diesel generators took over. The explosion in August 2020 , which killed more than 200 people and devastated Beirut’s commercial port, further brought the country to its knees.

Anecdotally, oncologists in Beirut now estimate that general cancer rates have been rising by 30% annually since 2020. There is a common observation – although as yet no definite data – that patients are getting younger and the tumours more aggressive.

Hani Nassar runs a cancer support association in the name of his late wife, Barbara Nassar. In his office in Beirut he points to a box of Lynparza, used to treat ovarian cancer. It is one of the medications not subsidised by the health ministry and costs $6,000 for a month’s supply. His association supports 40 women and he sometimes has to share one box among all of them.

Money is the biggest problem facing cancer patients in Lebanon , he says. The crisis has wreaked chaos. The average public sector salary is about $150 a month, far below the cost of chemotherapy.

“We have a lot of cancer patients who have not even begun any treatment,” says Hani. “They just end up saying, ‘OK, I will die – I don’t want to deprive my family of our house, our car, etc, just to pay for this.’”

In 2023, Human Rights Watch reported that lack of a reliable power supply had affected people’s right to electricity, and pointed to the Lebanese government continually adopting policies that entrenched oil dependency even as nations around the world try to transition to renewable energy.

“Diesel importers exert great influence, primarily because of the overlap between the shareholders of these companies and the political establishment,” the report noted.

Saliba says generator-owners and fuel importers are “making a fortune from burning diesel inside the city and suffocating people”. In 2017, Lebanon imported around $900m (£720m) worth of diesel for generators. By 2022, that figure was reported to have jumped to $1.9bn .

Lebanon’s government, paralysed politically and failing to enact anti-corruption measures that could unlock a bailout deal from the International Monetary Fund, has frozen ministry budgets, affecting all areas of life.

The air pollution monitor network – funded by the EU – has been out of service since 2019.

Lebanon is stuck in a “big vicious cycle” Saliba says. “We are a very poor country now, so we keep asking for all this money. But the trend across all sectors – and everything the government has handled over the past 10 years – is to take the money, install what needs installing, and then leave it without operating costs or any willingness to put the effort in to keep it running.”

The billions of dollars pumped into Lebanon by various international donors for infrastructure projects have not corrected the most basic issues, she says: “There is still no clean air, water or soil. There is nothing to show for any of it.”

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Julien Jreissati from Greenpeace Middle East and North Africa says an inoperative air pollution monitor network is consistent with other environmental projects.

“At least it was used and was a useful source of information for a time,” Jreissati says. “Unlike in the waste-management sector – which has seen millions of dollars poured into infrastructure projects, by the EU and other funders, such as funding wastewater-treatment plants or recycling plants.”

Many of these internationally funded projects, he adds, were never operational and some were never connected to the wastewater network.

A 2020 Greenpeace study estimated that 2,700 people died prematurely in Lebanon because of air pollution in 2018 – the highest rate per capita in the Middle East, joint with Egypt. The report found that the economic cost of air pollution in Lebanon amounted to $1.4bn – 2% of its GDP. Now, with no systemic data, there is no way to estimate the premature deaths.

Oncologists interviewed by the Guardian were keen to stress that while diesel generators harm public health, there is no getting away from Lebanon’s tobacco consumption.

An estimated 70% of the adult population of Lebanon smoke regularly and 38% are full-time smokers.

Dr Fadlo Khuri, the president of AUB and an oncologist specialising in lung and neck cancer says what is happening in Beirut is “a confluence of circumstances”.

Lebanon only taxes imported tobacco products: a packet of 20 Marlboro Gold costs £2.20 (in the UK it costs about £15), while the local brand Cedars costs 60p for 20. The domestic tobacco industry, Khuri says dryly, is “probably the only remaining functional branch of the government, besides the armed forces”.

He also says the health effects caused by long-term exposure to the airborne carcinogens from the generators – such as emphysema, heart disease and cancers – could take years more to see.

“The AUB did measurements and mathematic modelling and found that 40% of daily exposure by people in Lebanon to airborne carcinogens comes from one source: diesel generators,” Khuri says. “You’re not going to see the impact of that on lung and neck and bladder cancer rates for years because these are diseases which take years of chronic exposure.”

For Pia Saadeh, 27, diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer six months ago, the government does not take the link between Lebanon’s worsening environment and rising cancer rates seriously enough.

“Generators should be gone,” she says. “The government has to take back control over the electricity sector. Where can you hide from the pollution here? It’s in the water, it’s the air, it’s in what you eat, it’s everywhere.”

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Terry Anderson, Reporter Held Hostage for Six Years, Dies at 76

The Beirut bureau chief for The Associated Press, he was kidnapped in 1985 by Islamic militants.

By Sam Roberts

Terry Anderson, the American journalist who had been the longest-held Western hostage in Lebanon when he was finally released in 1991 by Islamic militants after more than six years in captivity, died on Saturday at his home in Greenwood Lake, N.Y., in the Hudson Valley. He was 76.

The cause was apparently complications of recent heart surgery, his daughter Sulome Anderson said.

Mr. Anderson, the Beirut bureau chief for The Associated Press, had just dropped his tennis partner, an A.P. photographer, at his home after an early morning tennis match on March 16, 1985, when men armed with pistols yanked open his car door and shoved him into a Mercedes-Benz. The same car had tried to cut him off the day before as he returned to work from lunch at his seaside apartment.

The kidnappers, identified as Shia Hezbollah militants of the Islamic Jihad Organization in Lebanon, beat him, blindfolded him and kept him chained in some 20 hideaways for 2,454 days in Beirut, South Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley.

The militants, supported by Iran, indicated that they were retaliating against Israel’s use of American weapons in earlier strikes against Muslim and Druze targets in Lebanon. They had also been seeking to pressure the Reagan administration to secretly facilitate the illegal sales of weapons to Iran — an embarrassing scheme that became known as the Iran-contra affair because the administration had planned to use proceeds from the arms sales to secretly subsidize the right-wing contra rebels in Nicaragua.

Mr. Anderson was the last of 18 Western hostages released by the kidnappers. After he was freed, he married his fiancé, Madeleine Bassil, who had been pregnant when he was kidnapped, and, for the first time, met his 6-year-old daughter.

While he had not been tortured during his captivity, he said, he was beaten and chained. He spent a year or so, on and off, in solitary confinement, he said.

“There is nothing to hold on to, no way to anchor my mind,” he said after the ordeal. “I try praying, every day, sometimes for hours. But there’s nothing there, just a blankness. I’m talking to myself, not God.”

He found some consolation in the Bible, though, and added: “The only real defense was to remember that no one could take away my self-respect and dignity — only I could do that.”

Terry Alan Anderson was born on Oct. 27, 1947, in Lorain, Ohio, where his father, Glen, was the village police officer. When he was still young, the family moved to Batavia in western New York, where his father drove a truck and his mother, Lily (Lunn) Anderson, was a waitress.

After graduating from high school, he was accepted by the University of Michigan and offered a scholarship but decided to join the Marines instead. He served for five years in Japan, including in Okinawa, and in Vietnam, where he was a combat journalist. He spent a final year in Iowa as a recruiter.

After he was discharged, Mr. Anderson earned degrees in journalism and political science from Iowa State University while working for a local television station.

He worked for The A.P. in Japan and South Africa before beginning a two-and-a-half-year stint in Lebanon in 1983.

After his release, he owned a blues bar in Athens, Ohio, and ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for the Ohio State Senate in 2004. He sued Iran for $100 million in damages in a federal court and eventually collected about $26 million from Iranian assets in the United States that had been frozen by the government. His windfall lasted about seven years; he filed for bankruptcy in 2009.

Mr. Anderson established a foundation, the Vietnam Children’s Fund, with a friend, Marcia Landau, which built more than 50 schools in Vietnam. He also contributed $100,000 to endow the Father Lawrence Jenco Foundation, named for a fellow hostage who was the director of the Catholic Relief Services in Beirut. The foundation supports community service projects in Appalachia.

“Though my father’s life was marked by extreme suffering during his time as a hostage in captivity, he found a quiet, comfortable peace in recent years,” his daughter Sulome said. “I know he would choose to be remembered not by his very worst experience, but through his humanitarian work with the Vietnam Children’s Fund, the Committee to Protect Journalists, homeless veterans and many other incredible causes.”

Mr. Anderson taught at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, the University of Kentucky, the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and the University of Florida.

In addition to his daughter Sulome, he is survived by Ms. Bassil, his second of three wives, whom he married in 1993; another daughter, Gabrielle Anderson, by his first wife, Mihoko Anderson; a sister, Judy Anderson; and a brother, Jack.

Another sister, Peggy Say, figuratively wrapped America in a yellow ribbon of remembrance and rallied humanitarian groups and world figures to keep her younger brother from being forgotten after he was abducted. She died in 2015.

In 1993, Mr. Anderson published a memoir, “Den of Lions: Memoirs of Seven Years.” In The New York Times Book Review , Prof. Eugene Kennedy of Loyola University in Chicago called it “an improbable and moving love story” of a world-weary correspondent guilty over a failed marriage who falls in love with a beautiful Lebanese Maronite Catholic, a relationship that restores his religious conviction and provides a spiritual foundation “for his surviving his arbitrarily brutal years as a captive.”

As much as captivity was an ordeal, Mr. Anderson recalled, so was re-acclimating to what he called “the real world.”

“I had problems, and it took me a long time to begin to cope with them,” he said. “People ask me, ‘Did you get over them?’ I don’t know! Ask my ex-wife — ask my third ex-wife. I don’t know; I am who I am.”

“I was damaged a great deal more than I was aware of — than anyone was aware of,” he said, adding, “It takes as long to recover as the time you spent in prison.”

Neil MacFarquhar contributed reporting.

Sam Roberts is an obituaries reporter for The Times, writing mini-biographies about the lives of remarkable people. More about Sam Roberts

Terry Anderson, US journalist held hostage nearly 7 years in Lebanon, dead at 76

Terry Anderson, an American journalist who was held captive by Islamist militants for almost seven years in Lebanon and came to symbolize the plight of Western hostages during the country's 1975-1990 civil war, died Sunday at age 76, his daughter said in a statement.

The former chief Middle East correspondent for The Associated Press, who was the longest-held hostage of the scores of Westerners abducted in Lebanon, died at his home in Greenwood Lake, New York, said his daughter Sulome Anderson , who was born three months after he was seized. No cause of death was given.

Kept in barely lit cells by mostly Shi'ite Muslim groups in what was known as the hostage crisis and chained by his hands and feet and blindfolded much of the time, the former Marine later recalled that he "almost went insane" and that only his Roman Catholic faith prevented him from taking his life before he was freed in December 1991.

"Though my father's life was marked by extreme suffering during his time as a hostage in captivity, he found a quiet, comfortable peace in recent years. I know he would choose to be remembered not by his very worst experience, but through his humanitarian work with the Vietnam Children's Fund, the Committee to Protect Journalists , homeless veterans and many other incredible causes," Sulome Anderson said.

The family will take some time to organize a memorial, she said.

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Anderson's ordeal began in Beirut on the morning of March 16, 1985, after he played a round of tennis. A green Mercedes sedan with curtains over the rear window pulled up, three gunmen jumped out and dragged Anderson, still dressed in shorts, into the car.

The pro-Iran group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, saying it was part of "continuing operations against Americans." The abductors demanded freedom for Shi'ite Muslims jailed in Kuwait for bomb attacks against the U.S. and French embassies there.

It was the start of a nightmare for Anderson that would last six years and nine months during which he was stuck in cells under the rubble-strewn streets of Beirut and elsewhere, often poorly fed and sleeping on a thin, dirty mattress on a concrete floor.

During his captivity, his father and brother would die of cancer, and he would not see his daughter Sulome until she was 6 years old.

"What kept me going?" he asked aloud shortly after release. "My companions. I was lucky to have people with me most of the time. My faith, stubbornness. You do what you have to. You wake up every day, summon up the energy from somewhere. You think you haven't got it and you get through the day and you do it. Day after day after day."

Other hostages described Anderson as tough and active in captivity, learning French and Arabic and exercising regularly.

But they also told of him banging his head against a wall until he bled in frustration at beatings, isolation, false hopes and the feeling of being neglected by the outside world.

More: Peggy Say, who advocated for release of Terry Anderson, dies

"There is a limit of how long we can last, and some of us are approaching the limit very badly," Anderson said in a videotape released by his captors in December 1987.

Marcel Fontaine, a French diplomat who was released in May 1988 after three years of captivity, recalled the time cellmate Anderson thought freedom was near because he was allowed to see the sun and eat a hamburger.

In April 1987, Anderson was given a suit of clothes his captors had made for him. "He wore it every day," Fontaine said. A week later, however, Anderson's captors took the suit back, leaving him in despair and certain he was forgotten, Fontaine said.

More: Parents of 1st Islamic State hostage felt isolated

Scores of journalist groups, governments and individuals over the years called for Anderson's release, and his Oct. 27 birthday became an unofficial U.S. memorial day for hostages.

Anderson said he considered killing himself several times but rejected the notion. He relied heavily on his faith, which he said he had renewed six months before being kidnapped.

"I must have read the Bible 50 times from start to finish," he said. "It was an enormous help to me."

His sister, Peggy Say , who died in 2015, was his fiercest advocate during captivity.

She worked tirelessly for her brother's freedom. She visited Arab and European capitals and lobbied the pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury and every U.S. official and politician available.

Under pressure from the media and the U.S. hostages' families, the Reagan administration negotiated a secret and illegal deal in the mid-1980s to facilitate arms sales to Iran in return for the release of American hostages. But the deal, known as the Iran–Contra affair, failed to gain freedom for any of the hostages.

Born Oct. 27, 1947, in Lorain, Ohio, Anderson grew up in Batavia, New York. He graduated from Iowa State University and spent six years in the Marine Corps, mostly as a journalist.

He worked for the AP in Detroit, Louisville, New York, Tokyo, Johannesburg and then Beirut, where he first went to cover the Israeli invasion in 1982.

In that war-torn city, he fell in love with a Lebanese woman, Madeleine Bassil, who was his fiance and was pregnant with their daughter Sulome when he was snatched.

He is survived by his daughters Sulome and Gabrielle, his sister Judy and brother Jack, and by Bassil, whom Sulome Anderson called "his ex-wife and best friend."

Anderson and fellow hostages developed a system of communication by tapping on walls between their cells. Always the journalist, Anderson passed on news of the outside world he had picked up during captivity to Church of England envoy Terry Waite, who was being held in an adjacent room in September 1990 after years of solitary confinement.

"Then the world news: the Berlin Wall's falling, communism's demise in eastern Europe, free elections in the Soviet Union, work toward multiracial government in South Africa. All the incredible things that have happened since he was taken nearly three years ago. He thought I was crazy," Anderson wrote in his 1993 book "Den of Lions."

After his release, Anderson taught journalism at Columbia University, Ohio University, the University of Kentucky and the University of Florida until he retired in 2015.

Among businesses he invested in were a horse ranch in Ohio and a restaurant. He unsuccessfully ran for the Ohio state Senate as a Democrat in 2004 and sued Iran in federal court for his abduction, winning a multimillion-dollar settlement in 2002.

Terry Anderson, AP reporter who was held captive for years, dies at 76

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Terry Anderson, the globe-trotting Associated Press correspondent who became one of America’s longest-held hostages after he was snatched from a street in war-torn Lebanon in 1985 and held for nearly seven years , has died at 76.

Anderson, who chronicled his abduction and torturous imprisonment by Islamic militants in his best-selling 1993 memoir, “Den of Lions,” died Sunday at his home in Greenwood Lake, N.Y., according to daughter Sulome Anderson.

Anderson died of complications from recent heart surgery, his daughter said.

“Terry was deeply committed to on-the-ground eyewitness reporting and demonstrated great bravery and resolve, both in his journalism and during his years held hostage. We are so appreciative of the sacrifices he and his family made as the result of his work,” said Julie Pace, senior vice president and executive editor of the AP.

“He never liked to be called a hero, but that’s what everyone persisted in calling him,” said Sulome. “I saw him a week ago, and my partner asked him if he had anything on his bucket list, anything that he wanted to do. He said, ‘I’ve lived so much and I’ve done so much. I’m content.’ ”

After returning to the United States in 1991, Anderson led a peripatetic life, giving public speeches, teaching journalism at prominent universities and, at various times, operating a blues bar, a Cajun eatery, a horse ranch and a gourmet restaurant.

He struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder, won millions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets after a federal court concluded that the country played a role in his capture, then lost most of it to bad investments. He filed for bankruptcy in 2009.

Upon retiring from the University of Florida in 2015, Anderson settled on a small horse farm in a rural section of northern Virginia he had discovered while camping with friends.

World & Nation

Hostage Ordeal Ends as Anderson Is Freed : Mideast: ‘Faith, stubbornness’ kept him going through 6 1/2 years as captive, American says. He left his captors with a single word--’Goodby.’

Dec. 5, 1991

“I live in the country, and it’s reasonably good weather and quiet out here and a nice place, so I’m doing all right,” he said with a chuckle during a 2018 interview with the Associated Press.

In 1985 he became one of several Westerners abducted by members of the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah during a war that had plunged Lebanon into chaos.

After his release, he returned to a hero’s welcome at AP’s New York headquarters.

Louis D. Boccardi, the president and chief executive officer of the AP at the time, recalled Sunday that Anderson’s plight was never far from his AP colleagues’ minds.

“The word ‘hero’ gets tossed around a lot but applying it to Terry Anderson just enhances it,” Boccardi said. “His 6½-year ordeal as a hostage of terrorists was as unimaginable as it was real — chains, being transported from hiding place to hiding place strapped to the chassis of a truck, given often inedible food, cut off from the world he reported on with such skill and caring.”

As the AP’s chief Middle East correspondent, Anderson had been reporting for several years on the rising violence gripping Lebanon as the country fought a war with Israel, while Iran funded militant groups trying to topple its government.

Kidnapers Videotape Anderson, Who Urges Talks to Free All Hostages

American journalist Terry Anderson, the longest-held Western hostage in Beirut, in a videotape released Sunday called on all sides to press negotiations for an overall hostage release.

Oct. 7, 1991

On March 16, 1985, a day off, he had taken a break to play tennis with former AP photographer Don Mell. Anderson was dropping Mell off at home when gun-toting kidnappers dragged him from his car.

He was probably targeted, he said, because he was one of the few Westerners still in Lebanon and because his role as a journalist aroused suspicion among members of Hezbollah.

“Because in their terms, people who go around asking questions in awkward and dangerous places have to be spies,“ he told the Virginia newspaper the Review of Orange County in 2018.

Reporter Starts 7th Year as Hostage : Lebanon: Terry Anderson of AP is the longest held--and best known--of the Westerners abducted by Islamic fundamentalists.

In a city of 1.4 million people and a reputation for chaos, is it possible that a letter with only a name and “Beirut” for an address can be delivered?

March 16, 1991

What followed was nearly seven years of brutality during which he was beaten, chained to a wall, threatened with death, often had guns held to his head and was kept in solitary confinement for long periods of time.

Anderson was the longest held of several Western hostages Hezbollah abducted over the years, including Terry Waite , the former envoy to the archbishop of Canterbury, who had arrived to try to negotiate his release.

Envoy Waite Detained by Hezbollah Forces, Diplomatic Sources Say

Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite is being detained by fundamentalist Hezbollah forces in Lebanon in a political tug-of-war between the militant Shia Muslim group, which has close ties to Iran, and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, diplomatic sources said Friday.

Jan. 31, 1987

By his and other hostages’ accounts, Anderson was the most hostile prisoner, demanding better food and treatment, arguing religion and politics with his captors and teaching other hostages sign language and where to hide messages so they could communicate privately.

He managed to retain a quick wit and biting sense of humor during his long ordeal. On his last day in Beirut, he called the lead kidnapper into his room to say he’d just heard an erroneous radio report that he’d been freed and was in Syria.

“I said, ‘Mahmound, listen to this, I’m not here. I’m gone, babes. I’m on my way to Damascus.’ And we both laughed,” he told Giovanna Dell’Orto, author of “AP Foreign Correspondents in Action: World War II to the Present.”

He learned later that his release was delayed when a third party, to whom his kidnappers planned to turn him over, left for a tryst and had to be replaced.

Mell, who was in the car during the abduction, said Sunday that he and Anderson shared an uncommon bond.

“Our relationship was much broader and deeper, and more important and meaningful, than just that one incident,” Mell said.

Mell credited Anderson with launching his career in journalism, pushing for the young photographer to be hired by the AP full-time. After Anderson was released, their friendship deepened. They were best man at each other’s weddings and were in frequent contact.

Anderson’s humor often hid the PTSD he acknowledged suffering for years afterward.

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“The AP got a couple of British experts in hostage decompression, clinical psychiatrists, to counsel my wife and myself, and they were very useful,” he said in 2018. “But one of the problems I had was I did not recognize sufficiently the damage that had been done.

“So, when people ask me, you know, ‘Are you over it?’ Well, I don’t know. No, not really. It’s there. I don’t think about it much these days; it’s not central to my life. But it’s there.”

Anderson said his faith as a Christian helped him let go of the anger. And something his wife later told him also helped him to move on: “If you keep the hatred you can’t have the joy.”

At the time of his abduction, Anderson was engaged to be married, and his future wife was six months pregnant with Sulome.

The couple married soon after his release but divorced a few years later. Although they remained on friendly terms, Anderson and his daughter were estranged for years.

“I love my dad very much. My dad has always loved me. I just didn’t know that because he wasn’t able to show it to me,” Sulome told the AP in 2017.

A Palestinian baby in Gaza is born an orphan in an urgent cesarean section after an Israeli strike

Sabreen came into the world seconds after her mother left it. Their home was hit in an Israeli airstrike in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

Father and daughter reconciled after the publication of her critically acclaimed 2017 book “The Hostage’s Daughter,” in which she told of traveling to Lebanon to confront and eventually forgive one of her father’s kidnappers.

“I think she did some extraordinary things, went on a very difficult personal journey, but also accomplished a pretty important piece of journalism doing it,” Anderson said. “She’s now a better journalist than I ever was.”

Terry Alan Anderson was born Oct. 27, 1947. He spent his early childhood in the Lake Erie town of Vermilion, Ohio, where his father was a police officer.

After graduating from high school, he turned down a scholarship to the University of Michigan in favor of enlisting in the Marines, where he rose to the rank of staff sergeant and served in the Vietnam War.

After returning home, he enrolled at Iowa State University, where he graduated with a double major in journalism and political science and soon went to work for the AP. He reported from Kentucky, Japan and South Africa before arriving in Lebanon in 1982, just as the country was descending into chaos.

“Actually, it was the most fascinating job I’ve ever had in my life,” he told the Review. “It was intense. War’s going on — it was very dangerous in Beirut. Vicious civil war, and I lasted about three years before I got kidnapped.”

Anderson was married and divorced three times. In addition to Sulome, he is survived by daughter Gabrielle Anderson from his first marriage; a sister, Judy Anderson; and a brother, Jack Anderson.

“Though my father’s life was marked by extreme suffering during his time as a hostage in captivity, he found a quiet, comfortable peace in recent years,” Sulome said in a statement Sunday. “I know he would choose to be remembered not by his very worst experience, but through his humanitarian work with the Vietnam Children’s Fund, the Committee to Protect Journalists, homeless veterans and many other incredible causes.”

Memorial arrangements were pending, she said.

Associated Press writers Meldrum and Weber reported from New York and Los Angeles, respectively. Retired AP writer John Rogers in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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