Avot Yeshurun, 88, a major Israeli poet who wove Arabic and Yiddish idiom into a unique and influential form of Hebrew verse, died Saturday. No cause of death was given. Born in the Ukraine as Yehiel Perlmutter, he immigrated to Palestine in 1925, worked as a laborer and began publishing poetry. Long ignored by the literary establishment, he became a guru for young Israeli poets. His stature was recognized a month ago when he was awarded the prestigious Israel Prize. His wife died six weeks ago.

Markos Vafiades, a founder of Greece's Communist Party and the leader of its army during the 1946-1949 civil war, died of complications following a stroke late Saturday. In April 1989, he was elected to Parliament after joining then Premier Andreas Papandreou's Panhellenic Socialist Movement.

Katie ter Horst, the volunteer nurse known as the "Angel of Arnhem" to hundreds of wounded British soldiers in World War II, has died at the age of 85 in Oosterbeek, Netherlands. She was hit by a car that swerved off the road as she walked with her husband near her home, where Mrs. Ter Horst tended to hundreds of British soldiers during the Battle of Arnhem in September 1944.