One of the biggest Middle East enigmas came closer to a resolution today, as the remains of iconic Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat were exhumed to enable investigators to seek traces of poison.
The remains were exhumed this morning, according to Palestinian officals, and now international forensic experts will search for additional clues to Arafat's death.
The investigation will cap eight years of speculation about whether the former president was murdered, as many Palestinians believe.
French judges in charge of the investigation arrived on Sunday in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where Arafat's mausoleum stands in the grounds of the Muqataa complex, from which the late leader ruled and where president Mahmoud Abbas has his headquarters.
Rumours and speculation have surrounded Mr Arafat's death ever since a quick deterioration of his health before he died at the Percy military hospital near Paris in November 2004 at the age of 75.
Doctors were unable at the time to say what killed the Palestinians' first democratically-elected president and an autopsy was never performed, at his widow Suha's request.
But many Palestinians believed he was poisoned by Israel - a theory that gained ground in July when Al-Jazeera reported Swiss findings showing abnormal quantities of the radioactive substance polonium on Arafat's personal effects.
France opened a formal murder inquiry in late August at Suha's request.
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