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A senior Hezbollah commander has been killed in an Israeli operation in Syria, the Lebanon-based Shia militant organisation says. It says Mustafa Amine Badreddine died in an Israeli air strike near Damascus airport. Israel has so far made no public comment on the claim. Badreddine - and three other alleged Hezbollah members - is accused of assassinating former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri in Beirut in 2005. Announcing Badreddine's death, Hezbollah said in a statement: "He took part in most of the operations of the Islamic resistance since 1982."
Born in 1961, he is believed to have been a senior figure in Hezbollah's military wing. He was a cousin and brother-in-law of Imad Mughniyeh, who was the military wing's chief until his assassination by car bomb in Damascus in 2008. Badreddine is reported to have sat on Hezbollah's Shura Council and served as an adviser to the group's overall leader Hassan Nasrallah. According to one report, a Hezbollah member interrogated by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), described Badreddine as "more dangerous" than Mughniyeh, who was "his teacher in terrorism".
They are alleged to have worked together on the October 1983 bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut that killed 241 personnel. He was on a US sanctions list. Hezbollah - the Party of God - is a Shia Islamist political, military and social organisation that wields considerable power in Lebanon. It emerged with the help of Iran during the Israeli occupation of Lebanon in the early 1980s, though its ideological roots stretch back to the Shia Islamic revival in Lebanon in the 1960s and '70s.
Top Hezbollah commander Badreddine killed in Israel strike - BBC News
Hassan Nasrallah made the pledge despite heavy losses the Shiite group has incurred in fighting along Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces in the war-wrecked Aleppo province this month. In a speech addressing supporters to mark 40 days since the killing of Hezbollah’s top commander Mustafa Badreddine in Syria, Nasrallah called the fight for Syria’s largest city and its province the “great” battle of the Syria war. “We will increase our presence in Aleppo,” he said and added that “there can be no retreat, and no doubt.”
Hezbollah, a Shiite group which is also part of the Lebanese government, has sent thousands of fighters to support Assad’s forces in the civil war next door. The conflict is now in its sixth-year. Over 1,000 of Hezbollah’s fighters have been killed in battle. Nasrallah admitted to losing 26 fighters in the Aleppo region in June alone but also claimed that more than 600 fighters were killed on the side of the enemy. He also said the fate of Lebanon is intertwined with that of Syria and Iraq, adding that it is only natural that his fighters be involved in those conflicts to protect Lebanon.
A Hezbollah supporter wave his group flag, as Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, center, speaks via a video link during a ceremony marking the death of Hezbollah commander Mustafa Badreddine who was killed in in Damascus last month, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, June 24, 2016. Nasrallah says the Lebanese Shiite militant group will send more fighters to Syria’s Aleppo province, where pro-government forces are battling Syrian rebels on several fronts.
Nasrallah also criticized Bahrain’s rulers for their decision to strip the country’s leading Shiite cleric of his nationality in a move that brought thousands of protesters into the streets and threatened to further ignite sectarian tensions across the region. In his speech, he blasted Bahrain’s Sunni leaders as being “midgets” and “servants” of the Saudi ruling family.
Hezbollah vows to send more fighters to Syria's Aleppo
