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JERUSALEM (AP) -- Former Israeli military chief Dan Shomron, the paratrooper who commanded the famed 1976 hostage rescue at Entebbe airport in Uganda, died Tuesday from the effects of a stroke.

He never recovered after being rushed to Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv on February 5, hospital spokeswoman Aviva Shemer said.

Israeli leaders remembered Shomron as one of the greatest military minds in the country's 60-year history.

"Dan Shomron was a brave-hearted warrior who left his stamp on the fighting spirit of the Israeli army, with some of the most daring operations in its history, " Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in a statement. "His death is a loss to the whole of Israeli society"

Born on a kibbutz collective farm near the Sea of Galilee in 1937, Shomron enlisted as a paratrooper in 1955 and fought in the Sinai war the following year, when British, French and Israeli troops invaded Egypt after it nationalized the Suez Canal.

The 1967 Middle East War saw him back in the Sinai fighting Egyptian troops again. According to his military resume, he was the first Israeli paratrooper to reach the canal.

Promoted to brigadier general in 1974, he was put in command of Israel's paratroopers and infantry.

It was in that post that he oversaw the daring Entebbe mission in 1976. His commandos landed at the Ugandan airport under cover of darkness and freed more than 100 airline passengers who had been held hostage by Palestinian and German hijackers for a week.

He served as head of the army's southern command in 1979-83, orchestrating the withdrawal of troops from the Israeli-held Sinai following Israel's historic 1979 peace treaty with Egypt.

Shomron was chief of the military staff in 1987-91, years during which the Palestinians launched their first uprising against Israeli control and Iraq fired Scud missiles at Israel during the U.S.-led war to liberate Kuwait.

After leaving the military in 1991, he became chairman of state-owned arms manufacturer Israel Military Industries.

He was called out of retirement in 2006 to head a military inquiry into Israel's inconclusive war with Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon that summer. It concluded the general staff failed to translate Olmert's policy objectives into defined military targets.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who was Shomron's deputy before succeeding him as chief of staff, said he was one of the army's most outstanding field commanders, and its bravest, in recent decades.

"I knew him for many years, since we were both young captains," Barak said. "I loved him very much, I loved working with him." E-mail to a friend

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