Halloween Producer Buried In Syria

LATEST: MOUSTAPHA AKKAD, the executive producer of the Halloween films who lost his life in the hotel bomb attacks that hit Jordan on Wednesday (09NOV05), was given a hero's burial in Syria yesterday (13NOV05).

The 69-year-old, who also directed the 1981 movie LION OF THE DESERT starring Anthony Quinn, Oliver Reed and Rod Steiger, was in Amman to attend a wedding in one of three hotels struck by suicide bombers. His 34-year-old daughter, RIMA AKKAD MONLA, also died in the blast.

In the wake of Akkad's tragic death, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad signed a decree awarding the American national Syria's most prestigious civil medal to award "his Arab nationalist stances".

Akkad was laid to rest in the northern city of Aleppo, where he was born and raised before he moved to Los Angeles in the 1950s to study.