The group says the blast that killed Mustafa Badreddine near the Damascus International Airport was caused by artillery shelling by “takfiri” groups, a term Hezbollah uses to refer to Sunni extremists.
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Both identities ended when an explosion near the global airport in the Syrian capital, Damascus, killed Badreddine and injured several others, according to a statement released by the militant group Friday.
Islamic State and the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front are amongst those being fought.
The group announced Badreddine’s death without saying when the attack occurred.
Around 1,200 Hezbollah fighters are estimated to have been killed in the Syrian conflict.
It didn’t say when the explosion happened, and Hezbollah’s media office said they also had no information about the timing of the attack.
After that, Badreddine, known among the group’s ranks as Zulfiqar, became Hezbollah’s top military commander and adviser to the group’s leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
Assad is a close ally of Hezbollah’s patron, Iran, which has long provided a conduit to supply Hezbollah with weapons to battle Israel.
In Hezbollah’s statement on Saturday, a day after thousands attended Badreddine’s funeral in Beirut, Hezbollah vowed no let-up in its war against those it describes as “criminal gangs” in Syria.
With Badreddine’s death, Hezbollah is likely to rely on a younger generation of commanders, moving away from the veterans who came of age during Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war or during Hezbollah’s 18-year war against Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon, which ended in 2000.
Badreddine was also one of five Hezbollah members indicted by the U.N.-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon in the February 2005 killing of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
He was a cousin and brother-in-law of Imad Mughniyeh, who was the military wing’s chief until his assassination by auto bomb in Damascus in 2008. Hezbollah has denied involvement.
Its fighters secured most of the Lebanese border region, cutting vital rebel supply lines, and reasserted government control in most of the southern suburbs of Damascus, including the Sayyida Zeinab Shiite shrine district, revered by Hezbollah’s followers and by its Iranian backers.
The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdel Rahman, said that no artillery fire had been heard in the area either in the past three days.
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For years, Badreddine masterminded military operations against Israel from Lebanon and overseas and managed to escape capture by Arab and Western governments.
