Hotel, in Park Lane, London. There is another report giving the number of men as four. Armed with a WZ63 machine pistol, Hussein Ghassan Said shot Argov in the head. Argov was not killed, but he was critically injured. He was rushed to the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, where he was transferred to a specialist unit and underwent emergency brain surgery. He remained in a coma for three months. The attempted assassins were members of Abu Nidal's organisation, a Palestinian splinter group which was hostile to the PLO. The attack was ordered by the Iraqi Intelligence Service. Following the attack, the assassins drove to the Iraqi embassy in London, where they deposited the weapon. Al-Banna was Abu Nidal's cousin, Said a Jordanian, and Al-Rosan an Iraqi intelligence colonel. The gunman, Said, was shot by Argov's bodyguard and also sustained serious head injuries and, like Argov, survived. The two uninjured assassins fled the scene but were arrested shortly afterwards in a London flat. It appeared that they were next planning to kill Nabil Ramlawi, the PLO representative in London. The attackers were convicted, and sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from 30 to 35 years. Subsequently two became mentally ill, and were transferred to high security hospitals in the UK. There was some speculation in Israel at the time that the British security services were aware of the plot. Lord Alton of Liverpool failed to draw the government into commenting on the speculation when he raised the issue in the House of Lords. The attempt on Argov's life triggered the Israeli decision to invade Lebanon two days later to rout Palestinian guerrilla bases. This was intended by the Iraqi authorities, who calculated that an Israeli war in Lebanon would be detrimental to the rival Ba'athist government in Syria—whether Syria intervened on behalf of the Palestinians or not. Israel invaded Lebanon on 6 June. The war saw the expulsion of the Palestine Liberation Organization from Lebanon, although the would-be assassins were not members of the PLO, and their leader, Abu Nidal, had even been sentenced to death in absentia by a PLO court. Later life After being in a coma for three months, Argov regained consciousness, and was returned to Israel. There, he was placed in the rehabilitation ward at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem as a permanent patient. Though he could not move, he remained lucid, and had newspaper headlines