The top military commander of Lebanon’s Hezbollah was killed in an explosion near the Syrian capital of Damascus, the Shiite guerrilla group said Friday, the highest-level casualty yet in its intervention in the raging civil war next door.
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But on Saturday details emerged that he had suffered fatal injuries at Damascus International Airport when artillery shells were fired by what Hezbollah described as “takfiri” groups – a term used to describe Sunni extremists, or jihadis.
Hezbollah fights in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and are seen as an important force behind keeping him in power after five years of war.
Hezbollah, which announced his death on May 13, says it is investigating whether he was killed in an airstrike, missile, or artillery shelling.
The Iranian regime’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has heaped praise on Hezbollah top military commander in Syria who died in a Damascus explosion this week.
“This is one of the most elite and uniquely pedigreed Hezbollah personalities”. Salami’s statements which came hours after the announcement of Badredddine’s death came in response to the loss of control over the town of Khan Tuman, vowing to restore it from Al-Nusra front and the opposition factions within days.
A six-day-old ceasefire in second city Aleppo expired early Thursday, and rebel snipers killed two civilians in the city s government-held sector, a monitoring group said.
It did not name any specific group, and there has been no claim of responsibility. In March 1984, he was jailed and sentenced to death by a Kuwait court for carrying out a string of bombings in the Gulf state.
It also highlighted the depth of Hezbollah involvement in Syria, with some of its most senior leaders apparently working closely with Assad and his generals.
Badreddine was a key suspect in the 2005 assassination in Beirut of Lebanese ex-premier Rafiq Hariri and was one of the “most wanted” by Israel. He escaped from prison in Kuwait after Iraq, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, invaded the country in 1990.
The statement hinted that the group will continue to be deeply involved in the conflict next door that has killed more than 250,000 people since 2011, including around 1,200 Hezbollah fighters.
It made no such threats after Badreddine s death.
According to USA officials, Assad and Nasrallah coordinated Hezbollah’s actions in Syria on a weekly basis, with Badreddine present at top Damascus meetings. Still, he said, Badreddine was a hot-headed, impetuous commander, making him unpopular in some quarters of the group, in contrast to Mughaniyeh, a “cold, calculating experienced operator”.
But other pro-Hezbollah media outlets have so far refrained from explicitly blaming Israel for the attack, as they did promptly on previous occasions.
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Hezbollah fighters carried the coffin of Badreddine through the streets of southern Beirut Friday in a funeral procession.
