BEIRUT (AP) – Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group said Friday that its top military commander Mustafa Badreddine was killed in an explosion in the Syrian capital of Damascus, a major blow to the Shiite group which has played a significant role in the conflict next door. However, some dispute his official status as the group’s military leader, saying he was only in charge of its operations in Syria, as Hezbollah has never publicly named a successor for Moughniyeh, whose son Jihad was also killed in Syria in an attack said to be Israel’s doing.
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He was killed on Tuesday night, said the statement from the Lebanese Shi’ite group.
Israel is yet to comment on the claim of his death.
Hezbollah has lost at least four prominent figures since January 2015, and a number of high-ranking Iranian officers have also been killed either fighting Syrian insurgents or in Israeli attacks.
Hezbollah – the Party of God – is a Shia Islamist political, military and social organisation that wields considerable power in Lebanon.
The killing of Badreddine, a brother-in-law of the late Hezbollah military commander, Imad Moughniyah, is the latest big loss sustained by Hezbollah and Iran in Syria despite Russian military intervention in support of Assad and his allies.
Friday’s statement gave no further details about how Badreddine died.
He later escaped execution after Saddam Hussain invaded Kuwait in 1990 and released scores of inmates from numerous prisons, fleeing to Beirut shortly after.
It was unclear whether those strikes were carried out by the Syrian air force, Russian warplanes or aircraft of the US-led coalition, all of which have struck Al-Qaeda in Syria in the past.
Lebanese media outlet, Ya Libnan reported that Al-Din was behind the bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Lebanon in 1983, which killed 241 marines.
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Hezbollah’s intervention was vital in shoring up Assad’s regime at its lowest point in the war against rebels backed by Gulf Arab and Western countries.
