Salim Jamil Ayyash was sentenced in absentia by UN-backed tribunal to life in prison for role in 2005 suicide bombing that killed Rafiq Hariri
A Hezbollah commander responsible for the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister was killed in a recent Israeli airstrike, Saudi media reported Sunday.
The Al-Arabiya outlet said Salim Jamil Ayyash was killed, with unconfirmed reports on social media claiming he was struck near the Syrian city of al-Qusayr, a known Hezbollah stronghold.
Ayyash, who had a $10 million reward from Washington on his head, was a senior member of Hezbollah`s Unit 151 assassination squad, according to the US State Department.
In 2020, Ayyash was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment by a UN-backed tribunal over the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri in a suicide bombing in Beirut in 2005.
Then-Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli strike in late September, refused to hand him over to the authorities, alongside three other defendants who were eventually acquitted.
Ayyash faced a separate case at the tribunal over three other deadly attacks on Lebanese politicians in 2004 and 2005.
Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Israel ” which rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria ” is believed to have carried out hundreds of strikes, mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters including from Hezbollah.
Since Hamas`s brutal October 7 massacre last year, which saw some 1,200 people killed in Israel and 251 kidnapped, Israel has escalated its strikes on Iranian-backed terror targets in Syria and has also struck Syrian army air defenses and some Syrian forces.
Israel has killed many of Hezbollah`s senior commanders in over a year of conflict, which began when the terror group began attacking Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis on October 8, 2023.
Nasrallah himself was killed in a massive strike on the terror group`s headquarters in Beirut in September, alongside the commander of Hezbollah`s so-called Southern Front, Ali Karaki, and other commanders.
Hezbollah`s most senior military leader, Fuad Shukr, was killed in July in response to a deadly rocket attack on the Golan Heights town of Majdal Shams.
An ongoing limited ground operation in southern Lebanon aims to eliminate the immediate threats posed by the terror group to Israel`s northern border communities.
The attacks on northern Israel since October 2023 have resulted in the deaths of 40 civilians. In addition, 61 IDF soldiers and reservists have died in cross-border skirmishes and in the ground operation launched in southern Lebanon in late September. Two soldiers were killed in a drone attack from Iraq, and there have been several attacks from Syria, as well, without any injuries.
The Lebanese health ministry says the country`s death toll in the war has surpassed 3,000. The figure does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. The IDF estimates that some 3,000 Hezbollah operatives have been killed in the conflict. Around 100 members of other terror groups have also been reported killed in Lebanon.
Published in 11/10/2024 20h34
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