In a statement, the Lebanese Shiite political and paramilitary organization said the commander, Mustafa Badreddine, was killed in Syria near the Damascus airport when “Takfiri groups” fired shells at his position.
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Hezbollah said its top military commander died as a result of artillery shelling near Damascus airport this week.
A Hezbollah spokesman said Badreddine’s death would only serve to boost the group’s “will and intention to continue fighting these criminal gangs”.
Hezbollah did not immediately say yesterday who it blamed for the attack, but its deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem said there were clear indications of who was behind it, and the group would announce the outcome of its investigation within hours.
(AP Photo/Hassan Ammar). Pictures of slain top commander Mustafa Badreddine, who was killed in Syria, hang during his funeral procession in a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, May 13, 2016.
However, the BBC’s Arab Affairs Editor Sebastian Usher says questions still remain over Badreddine’s death. Israel declined to comment. They have killed Hezbollah officers during combat in Syria, but neither group is known to have carried out targeted assassinations against Hezbollah.
Whatever its source, the explosion cut short the career of a man widely considered to be the group’s No. 2 leader as well as the heir apparent of Imad Mugniyeh, the Hezbollah operative assassinated by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Mossad in 2008 in the Syrian capital, and Badreddine’s brother-in-law.
But other pro-Hezbollah media outlets have so far refrained from explicitly blaming Israel for the attack, as they did promptly on previous occasions.
As per the reports on the activities of Hezbollah, most of the attacks that Mustafa Badreddine undertook had targetted Israel. “There is a history, there is a tension”, said Matthew Levitt, a Washington Institute expert of Hezbollah, though he underlined that any talk of a culprit in Badreddine’s death is speculation at the point.
Badreddine was indicted for involvement in the 1983 bombings of the USA and French embassies in Kuwait that killed five people.
Months before his death, Badriddine said he wouldn’t “come back from Syria unless as a martyr or a carrier of the banner of victory”, according to Hezbollah.
Hezbollah has paid a steep price for its bloody foray into Syria’s civil war, beyond its casualties.
It added that defeating insurgent groups in Syria was “the wish” of Badreddine, who was also known among the group’s ranks as Zulfiqar.
Nawar al-Saheli, a member of parliament for Hezbollah, claimed that Israel was behind the attack, and promised a response.
Hezbollah fighters carried the coffin, draped with the group’s yellow flag, as women on balconies tossed flowers and rice.
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“Takfiri” is a word used by the group to refer to hard-line, armed, Sunni Islamist groups.
