Hezbollah’s top military commander in Syria, Mustafa Amine Badreddine, was killed in artillery fire by jihadists, the Lebanese group says.
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“Takfiri” is a word used by the group to refer to hard-line, armed, Sunni Islamist groups.
Mr. Badreddine was believed to have led Hezbollah’s military operations in Syria, where the group is fighting on the side of President Bashar al-Assad.
Hezbollah issued a statement saying his killing would only boost the group’s “will and intention to continue fighting these criminal gangs until they are defeated”.
But Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that according to his network of activists in the area on the ground, there has been no shelling in the airport area since Wednesday.
Hizbollah announced Badreddine’s death on Friday and held a military funeral for him on the same day in its stronghold in southern Beirut.
His predecessor, cousin and brother-in-law Imad Mughniyeh, was killed in Damascus in a 2008 bombing that Hezbollah blamed on Israel.
The statement did not say when the attack took place or when Badreddine died.
Velayati, who is the Leader’s adviser on worldwide affairs, added that Badreddine’s death would boost determination of fighters in their campaign against ill-wishers and those who are hatching plots, particularly the Israeli regime.
In the first one, they mentioned that Mustafa Badreddine had said that he will not return from Syria unless martyred or victorious.
Around 1,000 Hezbollah fighters have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in 2011.
Badreddine’s death has raised many questions, namely because the area where he was killed is technically under the control of the Syrian army while Hezbollah and Iranian fighters are also present there.
Hizbollah might have a motive for not blaming Israel for Badreddine’s death.
“This martyrdom will be an incentive, same as those of late commanders, for more jihad, sacrifices and continuity”, a Hezbollah official, Hussein Haj Hassan, told Al Manar.
The senior Hezbollah figure was also sentenced to death by a Kuwaiti court for his role in the 1983 bombings which targeted the French and USA embassies in the country.
The 55-year-old had escaped Arab and Western enemies for years.
Badriddine was indicted by a United Nations -backed tribunal for his suspected involvement in a 2005 truck bomb that killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 22 others.
In the meantime he had been sentenced to death in Kuwait – but freed from jail by the Iraqi invasion of the country in 1990 – and masterminded anti-Israel operations in southern Lebanon.
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Hezbollah has denied any involvement in the Hariri assassination.
