BEIRUT, 14 February 2008 — Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Imad Mughniyeh was killed in a car bombing in the Syrian capital Damascus late on Tuesday. The hugely popular Lebanese group immediately blamed Israel for assassinating Mughniyeh who headed Hezbollah’s special operations unit.
Syrian state television reported that one person died in the bombing without identifying the victim but Hezbollah confirmed early yesterday that it was Mughniyeh.
Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television interrupted its normal programming to broadcast Qur’anic verses to mark the commander’s death.
Residents of Mughniyeh’s home village of Tair Debba, some five kilometers east of the Lebanese coastal town of Tyre, gathered in the street to listen to radio and television reports of his death. “We heard that he had been killed in a car bombing in Syria,” village chief Hussein Saad told reporters, adding that he had declared three days of mourning.
Hezbollah announced that Mughniyeh’s funeral service would be held today.
Witnesses in Damascus said that the bomb went off in a car park in the newly completed residential neighborhood of Kfar Suseh just before midnight on Tuesday. The rear of the Mitsubishi Pajero was entirely blown out by the force of the blast. After the explosion, police prevented journalists from getting close to the scene to see if there had been casualties. The windows of nearby buildings were blown out and four cars were also damaged.
The legendary fighter, who was in his late 40s, had long been on a list of people Israel wanted to kill or apprehend. The United States had offered a reward of $5 million for his capture. Mughniyeh was implicated in the 1983 bombings of the US Embassy and US Marine and French peacekeeping barracks in Beirut, which killed over 350 people, as well as the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and the kidnapping of Westerners in Lebanon in the 1980s.
“After a life full of jihad, sacrifices and accomplishments, Mughniyeh died a martyr at the hands of the Israeli Zionists,” said Hezbollah, which successfully fought a 34-day war in 2006 with the Jewish state. The war was allegedly triggered by a Hezbollah cross-border raid in which two Israeli soldiers were captured. According to Israeli intelligence assessments, Mughniyeh was involved in masterminding that raid.
Israel accuses Mughniyeh of planning the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires that killed 87 people and of involvement in a 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in the Argentine capital that killed 28.
“He was not only being targeted by Israel, but also by the Americans and many others,” said former Mossad head Danny Yatom. “He was one of the terrorists with the largest number of intelligence agencies and states chasing him.”
Mughniyeh had been a very tough target to track, he said, describing his death as a severe blow to Hezbollah. “He behaved with extreme caution for many years. It was impossible even to obtain his picture. He never appeared or spoke to the media. His identity was hidden. His steps were hidden, and that was the reason it was difficult to get to him for so many years.”
Hamas and Iran joined Hezbollah in accusing Israel of assassinating Mughniyeh, saying it was a new example of Zionist gangsterism.
Sami Abu Zuhri, the Hamas spokesman, called on Arabs and Muslims to “face up to this Zionist octopus whose crimes are now passing beyond the Palestinian territories to touch the Arab and Islamic world.”
Iran described it as an act of state terrorism. “This measure is the result and another prominent example of organized state terrorism by the Zionist regime (Israel),” IRNA quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Muhammad Ali Hosseini as saying.
He praised Mughniyeh, saying his life would constitute “a golden page in the popular struggle against Zionist aggressors and occupiers.”
In Washington, however, the United States applauded Mughniyeh’s killing. “The world is a better place without this man in it. He was a cold-blooded killer, a mass-murderer and a terrorist responsible for countless innocent lives lost,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. “One way or another he was brought to justice.”
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine accused Mossad of being behind the killing. “Mughniyeh was assassinated by the Zionist Mossad ... which was aware of the important status of the martyr and the privileged role he played in the jihad,” it said in a statement issued in Damascus. “The Zionist murderers and their agents should know that the resistance will respond by aiming its bullets and its explosives at the leaders of Zionist terrorism and their agents,” the statement added.
Mughniyeh was thought to be the commander of Islamic Jihad, a group that emerged in Lebanon in the early 1980s and was believed to have links with Hezbollah. Islamic Jihad members kidnapped several Western hostages, including Americans, in Beirut in the mid-1980s.
The group killed a few of its captives and exchanged others for US weapons to Iran in what came to be known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Among those tortured and killed was William Buckley, the CIA’s station chief in Lebanon.
In Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office denied that Israel was behind the killing. “Israel rejects any attempt by terrorist organizations to attribute to it any implication in this affair,” a statement from his office said. “We have nothing else to add.”
Israel rarely confirms or denies its involvement in assassinations abroad. In 1992, its helicopters killed Sayyed Abbas Moussawi, who preceded Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah as Hezbollah’s leader.
Mughniyeh’s brother was killed in a car bomb in Beirut in 1994. Reports at the time suggested Imad had been the target.
Israeli Environment Minister Gideon Ezra, a former director of Israel’s domestic security agency Shin Beth, welcomed the news, calling Mughniyeh “Lebanon’s Carlos.” That was a reference to “Carlos the Jackal,” a legendary Venezuelan fighter responsible for many attacks in the 1980s, who is now serving a life sentence in a French prison.
“I hope that every terrorist knows that he will eventually be caught, and I am glad that this has happened to Moughniyah. And I hope that whoever did this receives the congratulations he is due,” said Ezra.
Mughniyeh’s assassination comes as Lebanon is mired in its worst political crisis since the 1975-90 Civil War. The country has been without a president since November when pro-Syrian head of state Emile Lahoud stepped down with no successor in place amid deadlock between the Western-backed government and the Hezbollah-led opposition.
