| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Top Hezbollah commander killed in Lebanon after IDF drone strike, terror group says |
| 2024-08-18 |
| [NYPost version] A top commander in Hezbollah’s al-Hajj Radwan Force was killed on Saturday in southern Lebanon, the terrorist organization has confirmed. The Israel Defense Forces released aerial footage online, showing the drone strike that is believed to have taken out Hussein Ibrahim Kassab. Kassab was killed as he rode a motorcycle through the coastal city of Tyre, The Times of Israel reported. Hezbollah did not provide information about Kassab’s position or rank. The IDF said Kassab’s death marks the 412th killing of a Hezbollah operative since Oct. 7. Hezbollah, meanwhile, launched 55 rockets at northern Israel on Saturday in response to a deadly Israeli airstrike overnight that left 10 people dead near the city of Nabatieth in south Lebanon. The IDF said some of the Hezbollah rockets fell in open areas while others ignited multiple fires. No injuries were reported. |
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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran | |
| Qods Force chief: Israel’s destruction the blood debt of Hezbollah commander’s death | |
| 2018-03-10 | |
Mughniyeh was a founder of Hezbollah, serving as its international operations chief and liaison with Iran. He was the architect of a string of notorious bombings, kidnappings, hijackings and assassinations including the bombings of the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in Lebanon in the 1980’s. More Americans died in his orchestrated attacks than anyone else prior to 9/11. Mughniyeh died in a car bombing in Damascus in 2008. Initial suspects were the Syrians or the Israelis. Later revelation pointed to the latter, with the help of the Central Intelligence Agency. “They [Israel] know, but must more seriously know that the qisas [retribution] of Imad and all the Imads who’ve been martyred in Palestine, Lebanon and Iran is not the firing of a missile and killing someone,” Soleimani warned, “the qisas of these bloods is the destruction of the child-killing Zionist regime, and this is a certain matter.” | |
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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Questions and answers on the Syrian-Israeli talks |
| 2008-06-29 |
| These are the two questions and answers that I found interesting: Who assassinated Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus last February? The car bomb that killed Iran's key covert operative in Hizbullah is still echoing in the Middle East. Suspicion immediately focused on Israel. But on February 27, a London-based newspaper called Al-Quds al-Arabi, with very good sources in Damascus, alleged that several Arab nations had conspired with Mossad to assassinate Mughniyeh. Adding to the speculation are reports that shortly before his death, Mughniyeh was attempting to heal a split within Hizbullah between the group's leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and its former leader, Sheikh Sobhi Tufeili. Tufeili's power base is the Bekaa Valley, which has lost influence in Hizbullah to Shiites from South Lebanon. According to one Arab source, Mughniyeh - traveling under his longtime pseudonym, "Hajj Radwan" - paid a visit shortly before his death to Tufeili's village of Brital, just south of Baalbek. Mughniyeh usually traveled without bodyguards, believing that his protection was the surgical alteration of his features, which prevented even old friends from recognizing "Hajj Radwan." For that reason, the Syrians insisted they weren't at fault. But a sign of tension was Tehran's announcement that a joint commission would investigate the killing, a statement that was promptly denied by Damascus. What about Syria's secret nuclear reactor, which was destroyed by the Israelis on September 6, 2007? Oddly enough, that attack on what CIA analysts called the "Enigma Building" may have helped the peace talks. The Israelis felt that their decisive action helped restore the credibility of their deterrence policy. The Syrians appreciated that Israeli and American silence allowed them time to cover their tracks. Finally, the fact that Assad kept the nuclear effort a secret, and that he managed the post-attack pressures, showed Israelis that he was truly master of his own house, and thus a plausible negotiating partner. |
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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Killed Hezbollah Man Revered in Hometown |
| 2008-02-20 |
| Decades of eluding U.S. and Israeli intelligence won Imad Mughniyeh a mythic stature in his home village, where even his family knew little of what the secretive Hezbollah commander was doing. After his death in a Damascus car bombing last week, his poster hangs on every lamppost and building corner here. "My feelings toward him were the same as a fan's for a celebrity, wanting to get his autograph," said Zaynab, 25, one of Mughniyeh's two sisters. Mughniyeh, who helped set up the Shiite Hezbollah guerrilla group, was one of the world's most feared terror masterminds, accused by the West of killing hundreds in suicide bombings and hijackings in Lebanon and around the world. He dropped out of sight some 15 years ago few outside his inner circle knew where he was or even what he looked like until Feb. 12, when a car bomb killed the 45-year-old in the Syrian capital. But in this Lebanese village, surrounded by hills lush with orange groves and wild flowers, the mystery surrounding Mughniyeh known to his supporters by his nom de guerre of Hajj Radwan only burnished his image as a warrior against Israel and its ally, the United States. "To us, he's holy, a great leader," said 18-year-old Hasan Karam. "When we were growing up we kept hearing about Hajj Radwan, the hero fighting Israeli occupation. We used to hear Israel was after him and that he liberated our lands. But I never met him or knew what he looked like. We didn't even know until now that Hajj Radwan was the same person as Imad Mughniyeh." Now there's no escaping his image here. A recent photo of Mughniyeh stocky, wearing military garb, with a thick gray and black beard is hung everywhere in his home village of Tayr Debba, nestled in Hezbollah's heartland of mainly Shiite south Lebanon. Over the weekend, thousands came to mourn his death and pay respects to his family. "He was like a ghost in hiding," said Badie Zaydan, 52, a high school teacher in the village. "The success of the resistance is in its secrecy, even from family members," said fellow teacher Yousef Haidar, 42, referring to Hezbollah, the well-armed and tight-knit guerrilla force backed by Iran. Even Mughniyeh's mother rarely saw him since 1982, when at the age of 19 he quit his business administration studies at the American University of Beirut to help set up Hezbollah after Israel's invasion of Lebanon that year. "I encouraged him," his 69-year-old mother said as she received hundreds of mourners. Mughniyeh's wife, who refused to talk to reporters, sat next to her, her eyes red and swollen from crying. They had three children, two boys and a girl. It was the brief earlier 1978 invasion by Israel when Mughniyeh was 15 that first planted the seeds of armed action in Mughniyeh's mind, said his mother, who refused to give her first name and goes as Umm Imad, or mother of Imad. "That's when he decided to carry the gun and fight Israel," she said. Western and Israeli intelligence accuse Mughniyeh of involvement in suicide bombings in the 1980s in Beirut that killed hundreds of American and French troops, as well as the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner in which a U.S. Navy diver was killed, and bombings in the 1990s against the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish cultural center in Argentina that killed over 100 people. Mughniyeh's relatives deny his role in any of those attacks. "My son is not a terrorist," his mother said. "These are silly allegations ... My son is a fighter." Mughniyeh's two brothers, Jihad and Fuad, were killed in car bomb explosions in Beirut in the 1980s and 1990s. The only time villagers saw Mughniyeh after some 20 years of absence was in 2002, when he attend his uncle's funeral. "He comforted me saying my father's passing was God's will," said Mahmoud Mughniyeh, 45, a cousin. He said he couldn't tell whether his fugitive relative had plastic surgery because he hadn't seen him since the early 1980s. Huge black banners cover the outside walls of the Mughniyeh family house, a one-story building at the end of a green field overlooking a valley that stretches to the Mediterranean. "You will continue to haunt them ... you will be victorious," one banner says. "We shall not cry for you Hajj Imad, but we will resist," says another. |
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