Hizbullah 'terror chief' killed in Damascus car bomb
Hizbullah military chief Imad Mughniyah killed in car bomb in Syrian capital Damascus
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Wednesday, 13, Feb 2008 03:30
The commander of Hizbullah's military wing has died in a car bomb in Damascus, the Shia Muslim group has announced.
A statement on Hizbullah's al-Manar television channel confirmed the death of Imad Mughniyah, regarded by the US and Israel as one of the world's most-wanted terrorists.
"With all pride we declare a great jihadist leader of the Islamic resistance in Lebanon joining the martyrs - the brother commander Hajj Imad Moghaniyah became a martyr at the hands of the Zionist Israelis," al-Manar television claimed.
According to reports a bomb was placed under Moghaniyah's front car seat, although television pictures showed the silver four-by-four had emerged from the explosion largely unscathed.
Hizbullah has blamed the 45-year-old's assassination on Israel, although the Jewish state has denied any involvement in the blast in the Syrian capital.
A statement issued by prime minister Ehud Olmert's office insisted: "Israel rejects the attempts of terror elements to attribute to Israel any involvement in this incident."
Moghaniyah, regarded as second only to Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah in the group's hierarchy, is blamed by the west for a spate of high-profile terrorist attacks in the 1980s and 1990s.
The FBI named him as one of the world's most-wanted terrorists after implicating him in the bombing of the US embassy in Beirut, which killed more than 350 people in 1983.
Moghaniyah was the head of Hizbullah's security during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war but was thought to have gone to ground in Iran and Syria during the inconclusive Hizbullah-Israeli conflict of summer 2006.