Hezbollah said Saturday that the death of its top commander in Syria was the result of rebel shelling, and not an Israeli airstrike.
In a statement, the Lebanese Shiite political and paramilitary organization said the commander, Mustafa Badreddine, was killed in Syria near the Damascus airport when “Takfiri groups” fired shells at his position.
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“Investigations have showed that the explosion, which targeted one of our bases near Damascus International Airport, and which led to the martyrdom of commander Mustafa Badreddine, was the result of artillery bombardment carried out by takfiri (hardline Sunni) groups in the area,” the statement said.
The Shiite Muslim group is fighting in Syria, backing President Bashar al-Assad against a range of Sunni groups including Islamic State and the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front.
That statement said the shelling was part of the “American-Zionist project in the region,” which supports the “terrorist Takfiri” rebels in Syria.
Thousands of mourners, including high-level Hezbollah officials, turned out to Badreddine’s funeral on Friday in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Hezbollah said Badreddine was a “great Jihadi leader who took part in most of the Islamic resistance operations since 1982,” when the Israeli invasion of Lebanon killed thousands of civilians and sparked fierce resistance in the majority-Shiite areas in southern Lebanon, which the Israeli army occupied in its effort to root out Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Badreddine was the brother-in-law to the late Hezbollah military commander Imad Mugniyah, who was assassinated in Damascus in 2008, and like him, served in the PLO’s special Force 17 elite security service during Lebanon’s civil war before joining Hezbollah’s predecessor, Islamic Jihad. After Mugniyah was killed, Badreddine reportedly took over Mugniyah’s position as the senior military commander of the organization. Hezbollah’s statement said the two were “revered and beloved” companions.
Regardless of his position, Badreddine was lionized in Hezbollah and infamous for his alleged role in some of the most politically significant bombings and assassinations in the region during the past 30 years.
American intelligence officials say Badreddine helped organize the coordinated bombings on the US and French embassies in Kuwait in 1983 and accuse him creating the bomb that blew up the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing more than 200 Americans. The UN-organized Special Tribunal for Lebanon later charged him with having masterminded and worked with three other Hezbollah operatives to assassinate former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005.
Hezbollah did not explain how the shelling that killed Badreddine did not kill anyone else who would have likely been at his position.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that it sources said that Hezbollah’s claim that Badreddine was killed by artillery fire could not be confirmed.
“There has been no recorded shelling or firing from the Eastern Ghouta area onto Damascus International Airport for more than a week,” Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdulrahman told Reuters.
Former American officials expressed relief that one of the operatives allegedly responsible for American deaths had been killed.
“I could not be happier that someone killed the son of a bitch,” Ryan Crocker, a former ambassador to Lebanon, told the New Yorker’s Robin Wright.
Reuters contributed to this report.
