WASHINGTON  Aug 04 - Dr. Peter Safar, credited with inventing the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation technique, has died, the American Heart Association said on Monday. He was 79.

Dr. Safar died on Sunday, the association said in a statement. It did not give a cause of death.

"Safar's pioneering efforts and accomplishments in emergency and critical care medicine, resuscitation, life-saving first aid and disaster triage have saved countless lives and gained international recognition," it said.

"In the late 1950s, Safar proposed the A-B-C (airway, breathing, circulation) sequence of resuscitation, including the technique of 'mouth-to-mouth' rescue breathing."

The Vienna, Austria-born Safar helped create the organization that would become the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine in 1976.

He survived a Nazi labor camp and immigrated to the United States, where he became a citizen in 1959.

Safar lived in a suburb of Pittsburgh and was a professor at the University of Pittsburgh medical school.