Mustafa Badreddine, the top military commander
of Hezbollah, was killed in Syria, the Lebanon-based Islamist group
said Friday. Badreddine was killed Tuesday night in an attack that
targeted one of Hezbollah’s bases near an airport in the Syrian capital
Damascus, the group said.
“He [Badreddine] took part in most of the operations of the Islamic resistance since 1982,” Hezbollah said in a statement, calling Badreddine “the great jihadi leader.”
Hezbollah said it was working to “define the
nature of the explosion and its cause, and whether it was the result of
an airstrike, or missile [attack] or artillery.”
Lebanese TV station Al-Mayadeen, which is
close to the group, earlier said the 55-year-old was killed in an
Israeli attack but later retracted the report, according to the Associated Press.
Badreddine was elevated to the group’s top
military commander in 2008 after his predecessor Imad Mughniyeh was
assassinated in a bomb attack in Damascus. The commander’s death is seen
as the biggest setback for the Shia group since the killing of
Mughniyeh.
Badreddine was one of the four people who were
tried in absentia for the 2005 murder of former Lebanese prime minister
Rafik Hariri. He was also sentenced to death in Kuwait for his
involvement in the 1983 bomb attacks in the country. However, he eloped
from a Kuwaiti prison after Iraq, under the leadership of Saddam
Hussein, invaded the country in 1990. The U.S. Department of the
Treasury had put Badreddine’s name in sanctions list saying he was
responsible for Hezbollah’s military operations in Syria since 2011.
Hezbollah, which is supported by Iran, is
fighting in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad in the war-torn
country. About 1,200 Hezbollah fighters are estimated to have died in
the Syrian conflict, Reuters reported.
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