Updated at 10:40 a.m. ET: The remains of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat were exhumed from his grave on Tuesday -- eight years after his death at age 75 — as part of an investigation into allegations that he was poisoned, according to official Palestinian radio. 

Arafat's body was uncovered in its grave and samples were removed without having to lift the corpse from the ground. As a result, a planned reburial ceremony with full military honors was called off.

The tomb was resealed in hours and wreaths were placed by Palestinian leaders including Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

"The state of the body was exactly what you would expect to find for someone who has been buried for eight years. There was nothing out of the ordinary," Health Minister Hani Abdeen told a news conference.

A Palestinian medical team took samples and gave them to Swiss, French and Russian experts who flew in for the exhumation and who will examine them in their home countries, the officials said. Samples were taken earlier from Arafat's bedroom, office and personal belongings, they said.

Arafat case: 'Proof' still might elude Palestinians

French judges opened a murder inquiry into Arafat's death in August after a Swiss institute said it had discovered high levels of radioactive polonium on his clothing.

Slideshow: Arafat, in images

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See key moments and memorable scenes from Yasser Arafat's life.

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Jordanian doctor Abdullah al Bashir, head of the Palestinian medical committee, said about 20 samples were taken and analysis would take at least three months.

"In order to do these analyses, to check, cross-check and double cross-check, it will take several months and I don't think we'll have anything tangible available before March or April next year," said Darcy Christen, spokesman for Lausanne University Hospital in Switzerland that carried out tests on Arafat's clothes.

Rumors of foul play have long surrounded the sudden demise of Arafat, a champion of Palestinian statehood from the time he was 19, and eventually, the democratically elected president of the Palestinian Authority.

Arafat was revered by many Palestinians and Arabs as a freedom fighter and reviled by many Israelis and its allies as a terrorist for his relentless fight for Palestinian self-determination. But he also had enemies and rivals within the Arab and Palestinian political circles.

He died in November 2004 at a French military hospital, a month after suddenly falling ill. The rapid deterioration of his health and death baffled doctors who were trying to treat him in France, and an autopsy was never performed at the request of his widow, Suha.

'A painful necessity'
While the immediate cause of death was a stroke, the underlying source of an illness he suffered in his final weeks has never been clear, leading to persistent speculation in the Arab world that Israel poisoned him. Israel has denied such allegations.

Poisoning as a cause of death gained currency after a Swiss institute said it had found high levels of radioactive polonium on Arafat's clothing, which was supplied by Suha, prompting the French to open a formal murder inquiry.

Polonium was the substance that killed Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006. Litvenenko was a Russian ex-spy who later became a relentless critic of the Kremlin.

"It is a painful necessity" to exhume the body of Arafat, said Tawfiq al-Tirawi, who is in charge of the Palestinian committee overseeing the investigation, speaking to reporters in Ramallah on Saturday.

Tirawi said the Palestinians had "evidence which suggests Arafat was assassinated by Israelis," Reuters reported.

The exhumation might not resolve the mystery. Polonium-210 decomposes rapidly, and some experts say it is not clear whether any remaining samples will be sufficient for testing. 

NBC's Kari Huus, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Did the late Palestinian leader die of poisoning? This is the nagging question that French investigators hope to answer by exhuming the remains of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Tuesday, eight years after his death in a Paris hospital at the age of 75.

French judges in charge of the investigation arrived on Sunday evening in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the site of Arafat's mausoleum, in a murder investigation that was opened in August, the French news agency AFP reported.

Rumors of foul play have long surrounded the sudden demise of Arafat, a champion of Palestinian statehood from the time he was 19, and eventually, the democratically-elected president of the Palestinian Authority.

Arafat was revered by many Palestinians and Arabs as a freedom fighter, and reviled by many Israelis and its allies as a terrorist for his relentless fight for Palestinian self-determination. But he also had enemies and rivals within the Arab and Palestinian political circles.

The rapid deterioration of his health and death baffled doctors who were trying to treat him in France, and an autopsy was never performed at the request of his widow, Suha.

Many Palestinians believe Arafat was poisoned at the behest of Israel — an idea that Israel has rejected.

But poisoning as a cause of death gained currency after a Swiss institute said it had found high levels of radioactive polonium on Arafat’s clothing, which was supplied by Suha, prompting the French to open a formal murder inquiry.

Polonium was the substance that killed Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006. Litvenenko was a Russian ex-spy who later became a relentless critic of the Kremlin.

"It is a painful necessity" to exhume the body of Arafat, said Tawfiq al-Tirawi, who is in charge of the Palestinian committee overseeing the investigation, speaking to reporters in Ramallah on Saturday.

Slideshow: Arafat's journey

Tirawi said the Palestinians had "evidence which suggests Arafat was assassinated by Israelis," Reuters reported. 

Tirawi said separate samples will be taken from the remains by the French and Swiss forensic teams, as well as a Russian team of experts invited by the Palestinians, and that results could take up to several months to be announced. Arafat’s body would be reburied in a military ceremony, he said.

Not everyone agrees that exhuming the late leader serves a purpose because even if it shows that he was poisoned — which may be hard to establish this long after his death — it won’t reveal who poisoned him. 

The exhumation and renewed allegations of Israeli involvement could stir further tension between the Palestinians and Israelis, who are observing a truce after a week of fierce fighting in Gaza.

An editorial in the Jerusalem Post on Monday lambasted the process. 

"Can we really rely on an impartial forensic investigation now? Too much political capital appears to have been invested in this affair to instill much confidence that everything will be strictly on the up and up. This, moreover, is without even going into the issue of whether all evidentiary material is in fact untainted."

Another  critic of the exhumation — for entirely different reasons — is Arafat’s nephew Nasser al-Qidwa, who compared the process to "desecration," the AFP reported.

"No good can come out of this at all," Qidwa told the agency. "It does no good to the Palestinians."

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Reuters contributed to this report.

Odd Andersen / AFP - Getty Images file

Ailing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat says goodbye to well-wishers as he boards a Jordanian army helicopter at dawn at the Muqatta, his West Bank offices in Ramallah, Oct. 29, 2004.

Following allegations by his widow that the late Palestinian leader might have been poisoned, a French court has opened an inquiry into the 2004 death of Yasser Arafat, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Arafat died at age 75 in a Paris military hospital in November 2004, a month after being flown, seriously ill, from his battered headquarters in Ramallah, where he had been effectively confined by Israel for more than 2-1/2 years.

According to the BBC, medical records stated Arafat had a massive stroke resulting from a blood disorder caused by an unknown infection. Many Palestinians, however, still believe the leader was poisoned by Israel, the BBC said, adding that some also believe the late leader had AIDS.

Saeb Erekat, chief negotiator for the Palestinian Authority, welcomed the inquiry. However, he said the Arab League would also call at the United Nations for an international investigation into the death of Arafat, who led Palestinians' campaign to create a state through years of war and peace.

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Allegations of foul play have long surrounded Arafat's demise after French doctors who treated him in his final days said they could not establish the cause of death.

Many Arabs suspect Israel of being behind his decline, and the case returned to the headlines last month when a Swiss institute said it had discovered high levels of the radioactive element polonium-210 on Arafat's clothing supplied by his widow, Suha.

That substance was found to have killed former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.

Suha asked a court in the Paris suburb of Nanterre to open a murder investigation following the revelations publicized in a July documentary broadcast by the Qatar-based Al Jazeera satellite TV channel.

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However, the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne said that symptoms described in Arafat's medical reports were not consistent with polonium-210 and conclusions could not be drawn as to whether he had been poisoned.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said he hoped the French inquiry would reveal more on the circumstances of Arafat's death.

"This does not pertain to us. The complaint lodged by Suha Arafat with the French police does not address Israel or anyone in particular," he said.

"If the French justice system has decided to open an investigation, we hope that it will shed light on this matter."

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Erekat said a Palestinian committee investigating the death would continue its work. "We welcome the (French) decision," he said.

"We believe our political and medical team is working in parallel (with the French inquiry). At the same time the Arab League has now formed a committee which will call for an international investigation through the U.N. Security Council."

According to the BBC, Erekat said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had officially requested President Francois Hollande's assistance in this inquiry.

"We hope there will be a serious investigation to reveal the whole truth, in addition to an international investigation to identify all the parties involved in Arafat's martyrdom," Erekat said, according to the BBC.

'Premeditated murder'
A lawyer for Suha Arafat told Europe 1 radio that the French court was correct in recognizing its jurisdiction to investigate the case, since Arafat died in France.

"The tests done in Switzerland showed that Mr. Arafat, in all likelihood, died through poisoning," said the lawyer, Marc Bonnant. "This hypothesis must be proved, and if that's the case, then it's premeditated murder."

Suha Arafat has said her suspicions were raised when the hospital where her husband was treated acknowledged that it had destroyed his blood and urine samples.

The Palestinian Authority plans to exhume Arafat's body from a limestone mausoleum in Ramallah for an autopsy, and Tunisia has called for a ministerial meeting of the Arab League to discuss his death.

Arafat became the first president of the Palestinian Authority in 1996.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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