The Lebanon-based group said: “According to preliminary reports, a large explosion targeted one of our positions near Damascus worldwide airport killing brother commander Mustafa Badreddine and wounding other people”.
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The statement released Saturday said: “The result of the investigation will increase our commitment and will and perseverance in continuing to battle these criminal gangs and defeat them”. Thousands of guerrillas fighting alongside Syria’s military were crucial to tipping the battlefield in the government’s favor on multiple fronts, from the suburbs of Damascus to the northern province of Aleppo.
His death is seen as the biggest blow to the Lebanese Shia Islamist movement since the assassination of its military chief Imad Mughniyeh – Badreddine’s cousin and brother-in-law – in 2008.
Thousands of Hezbollah members are fighting alongside Syrian government forces on battlefields across the country and hundreds have been killed.
He also directed military operations against the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and was a frequent target of attempts by Israel, the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East to assassinate or capture him.
Hundreds of people have filled the streets of Beirut for the funeral of a top Hezbollah commander killed in Syria.
“Hezbollah has suffered heavy losses in Syria, with some sources estimating that at least 1,200 fighters have died since the group started its involvement in the war”, she said. When asked by an interviewer on Israel Radio about possible Israeli involvement, cabinet minister Zeev Elkin, a confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, declined to comment.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif sent condolences to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, saying Badreddine’s death “will further strengthen the determination of the forces of resistance against the Zionist regime (Israel) and terrorism”.
It said the group opened an investigation to know the reason behind the blast.
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.
Hezbollah’s statement said the two were “revered and beloved” companions.
A Lebanese politician with close links to the Syrian government told The Associated Press that Badreddine was killed Thursday night when a shell exploded near him outside a Hezbollah center near the airport.
Announcing his death on Friday, Hizbollah quoted Badreddine as having said he would return from Syria victorious or as a martyr.
Badreddine was also charged with masterminding the assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri in Beirut in 2005.
He was sentenced to death in Kuwait for his role in bomb attacks there in 1983 and escaped from a Kuwaiti jail after Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded in 1990.
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The Government is known to have authorised many air strikes in Syria since the beginning of the civil war.
