Top Hezbollah commander killed in Syria blast
Updated: 2008-02-13 19:01
With fears growing of street violence between the two camps, the US Embassy strongly encouraged American citizens in Lebanon to limit all but essential travel Thursday.
Hezbollah announced on its Al-Manar television that Mughniyeh "became a martyr at the hands of the Zionist Israelis." The station played Quranic verses in memorial and aired a rare, apparently recent picture of Mughniyeh -- showing a burly, bespectacled man with a black and gray beard wearing military camouflage and a military cap.
Syrian Interior Minister Brig. Gen. Bassam Abdul-Majid said Mughniyeh was killed Tuesday night in a car bombing in the upscale Damascus neighborhood of Kfar Sousse, the state news agency SANA reported.
Witnesses in the Syrian capital said the explosion tore apart the silver Mitsubishi Pajero, killing a passer-by and leaving only the front of the SUV intact. Security forces sealed off the area and removed the body. The Lebanese television station LBC said Mughniyeh was leaving a ceremony at an Iranian school and was approaching his car when it blew up. By Wednesday, the area had been cleared and there was no indication a car bombing had taken place.
The killing is deeply embarrassing to Syria, showing that the wanted fugitive was hiding on its soil. The United States has accused Syria, home to a number of radical Palestinian leaders, of supporting terrorism.
Iran blamed Israel for the assassination, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini calling the bombing "yet another brazen example of organized state terrorism by the Zionist regime."
In the past, when Israel has been fingered -- rightly or wrongly -- as responsible for attacks on targets beyond its borders, it has generally responded with impenetrable silence, for example over last September's airstrike on an as-yet undisclosed target in Syria.
This time Israel was quick to deny any role, possibly because it could pay a price for public claims.
"Israel rejects the attempt by terror groups to attribute to it any involvement in this incident. We have nothing further to add," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said in a statement.
Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on the border between the two countries in July 2006, sparking an Israeli incursion into south Lebanon and a 34-day war. While Hezbollah has not come forward with evidence that the soldiers are alive, Israel regards them as such until it is proved otherwise and would not want to jeopardize their return.
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