"Halloween" filmmaker Moustapha Akkad buried in home city of Aleppo, Syria

The maker of the "Halloween" horror films, Moustapha Akkad, was buried in his home city of Aleppo, north Syria, on Sunday, two days after he died of wounds received in the Jordanian hotel bombings.

Arab actors, Syrian Cabinet ministers and about 2,000 people attended the ceremonies at Aleppo's al-Rawdah Mosque and al-Jadidah cemetery. The chief family representative was his son, Malek.

Akkad's daughter, Rima Akkad Monla, 34, had died in one of the suicide attacks in Amman on Wednesday night that killed 60 people, including the bombers. She was buried Thursday in her husband's hometown of Tripoli, north Lebanon.

Akkad, 75, who lived in Los Angeles, died Friday in a Jordanian hospital. He had gone to Jordan to meet his daughter and attend a wedding.

"He was not only a victim of terrorism, but also a big loss to Arab culture," Syrian Information Minister Mahdi Dakhlallah said in Sunday's funeral. The al-Qaida in Iraq group has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Akkad's coffin was draped in the Syrian flag and bore a wreathe from President Bashar Assad.

The eldest of eight children, Akkad was born in Aleppo in 1930. He came to California in 1950 to study film making and took a degree in theater arts from the University of California, Los Angeles. He went on to work as a production assistant for the director Sam Peckinpah who was making the Western, "Ride the High Country," in 1962.

Although he won fame for his "Halloween" horror films, Arabs consider his best work to be two dramas about the history of Islam. The best known was "The Message," a 1976 film about the Prophet Muhammad which was widely acclaimed in the Middle East.

In the 1981 film "Lion of the Desert," Akkad told the story of a Muslim rebel who fought against Italy's colonial conquest of Libya, AP reported. V.A.