SIDON, Lebanon, 28 May 2006 — Mourners shouted “America is the Greatest Satan,” and “Death to Israel” as the bodies of the slain Islamic Jihad leader Mahmoud Majzoub and his brother, Nidal, were buried yesterday in this southern Lebanese coastal city. Islamic Jihad supporters among some 2,000 people walking behind the two coffins, draped in Palestinian and Lebanese flags also shouted: “We are going to Jerusalem ... Martyrs in the millions.”
A car bomb parked near a building where they lived exploded Friday, killing Nidal Majzoub instantly. Mahmoud Majzoub, Islamic Jihad’s leader in southern Lebanon, died in a hospital. Lebanese security officials said the bomb was detonated by remote control. Islamic Jihad blamed Israeli intelligence and vowed to retaliate for the attack, while Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fuoad Siniora condemned the killings and pledged to “exert all efforts to punish the aggressors.” He indicated that Israel was the primary suspect.
Islamic Jihad refused to recognize the truce with Israel declared in February 2005. While the rival group Hamas abided by the cease-fire, Islamic Jihad argued that violence was a legitimate response to Israeli actions. Islamic Jihad has claimed responsibility for eight of the nine suicide bombings in Israel since the truce. Its latest strike was on April 17 attack on a Tel Aviv restaurant that killed nine people, including an American teenager. The eight bombings killed a total of 28 Israelis, two Palestinians and four foreigners, including the American.
Friday’s killing was the first of a senior Palestinian official in Lebanon since the assassination of Abdullah Shreidi, an Islamic leader, in May 2005. In eulogizing the Majzoub brothers, Islamic Jihad’s representative in Lebanon, Abu Imad Rifai, said the group and its military wing, Al-Qods Brigades, “will stick to the choice of resistance and struggle. The coming response will be hard, in Haifa, Tel Aviv and every spot occupied by the Zionist enemy.”
In an earlier statement, Rifai rejected the possibility that other Palestinian or Lebanese groups could have killed Mahmoud. “No one has an interest in assassinating him except the Israeli Mossad,” he told the Associated Press on Friday.
Also yesterday, Mousa Abu Marzouk, deputy head off of the Hamas militant group, charged that Israel was behind the killings. “This is a message for our Palestinian people that our battle is long and harsh, and a message for all resistance factions that this enemy (Israel) is sly, and we have to be careful,” he told The Associated Press in Damascus.
