Post by Salem6 on Feb 13, 2008 11:04:44 GMT
Lebanese group Hezbollah says one of its top leaders, Imad Mughniyeh, has died in a bombing in Damascus, and has blamed Israel for assassinating him.
Mughniyeh is widely believed to be behind a wave of Western hostage-taking in Lebanon in the 1980s.
Correspondents say he had been in hiding for years and was high on US and Israeli wanted lists.
There has been not been any word about the incident from either the Syrian or Israeli governments.
Mughniyeh is variously described as special operations and intelligence chief of the Hezbollah's secretive military wing.
Correspondents say his death is a significant blow to Hezbollah, which battled Israel in the 2006 Lebanon war, and its Iranian and Syrian backers.
Neighbourhood in shock
Syrian police kept media and other onlookers well away from the scene of the overnight blast in the well-to-do Kafar Soussa district.
With all pride we declare a great jihadist leader of the Islamic resistance in Lebanon joining the martyrs
Hezbollah's Manar TV
Hours later, Syrian state TV confirmed one person had been killed in a car bombing, but did not identify the victim.
"Scores of police and intelligence officers rushed to the site. People in the neighbourhood are shocked," said one resident quoted by Reuters news agency.
"We saw security officers hauling the body away," said one witness quoted by Reuters news agency.
Hezbollah-owned Manar TV in Beirut announced the death saying: "With all pride we declare a great jihadist leader of the Islamic resistance in Lebanon joining the martyrs... the brother commander hajj Imad Mughniyeh".
The group said a funeral service would be held on Thursday.
Beirut has been tense ahead of a mass rally on the same day to commemorate three years since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
There have been repeated clashes between supporters of the pro-Western government and the opposition which includes Hezbollah.
High-profile attacks
Hezbollah was founded in 1982 by a group of Shia Muslim clerics after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
Early Hezbollah members may have bombed foreign forces out of Lebanon
It has emerged in recent years as a major political and military force in Lebanon, after military successes against Israel.
Shia militants who went on to become members are thought to have planned some of the most high-profile kidnappings and attacks of the 1980s, including the 1983 suicide bombings in Beirut that killed hundreds of US and French service personnel.
Mughniyeh was among several suspects indicted in the US for the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner in which a US Navy diver was killed.
Israel believes he was involved in planning the 1992 bombing of Israel's embassy in Argentina in which 29 people were killed and the blast at a Buenos Aires Jewish centre in 1994 two years later that killed 95.
Israeli MP Danny Yatom, who is a former head of intelligence service Mossad called him a "dangerous and cruel terrorists among the terrorists".
"His execution is a big achievement for the free world against terrorist organisations and through this action we'll know that none of the terrorists is immune," Mr Yatom said in a personal statement without official backing.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7242383.stm