Mideast Veteran Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the spearhead of an ultimately unsuccessful four-decade struggle for statehood, died at the age of 75, plunging the Middle East into a new era of uncertainty. Mideast World leaders reacted to the death early Thursday of veteran Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat by accepting him as a symbol of his people's cause, but differed sharply over his contribution to the Middle East peace process. Iraq A car bomb ripped through one of the main shopping streets in central Baghdad causing many casualties and sending a thick column of black smoke into the air, police said. Israel Mordechai Vanunu, who was freed in April after 18 years in an Israeli prison for revealing the country's nuclear program, was re-arrested, police said.