BEIRUT, (Reuters) – Hezbollah’s top military commander Mustafa Badreddine has been killed in a blast at a base near Damascus airport, the Lebanese Shi’ite group said yesterday, one of the biggest blows to its leadership the Iranian-backed organisation has ever sustained.
Hezbollah did not immediately say yesterday who it blamed for the attack, but its deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem said there were clear indications of who was behind it, and the group would announce the outcome of its investigation within hours. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
At least one Hezbollah figure blamed the group’s age-old enemy Israel, which has struck Hezbollah targets in Syria several times in the past since civil war started there in 2011. Israel declined to comment, but a former Israeli official said his country would be glad Badreddine was dead.
Hezbollah also has many other foes in Syria, where it fights in support of the government of President Bashar al-Assad against a range of Sunni Muslim groups including Islamic State.
Thousands of Hezbollah fighters and leaders gathered at a mosque in Hezbollah’s stronghold in southern Beirut and gave Badreddine a military funeral, waving Hezbollah flags. They chanted Shi’ite religious slogans, as well as “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”.
Speaking at the funeral, Qassem also vowed that the group would continue on the “path” of Badreddine.
In a letter, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif extended condolences “for the martyrdom of this great jihadist … who embodied devotion and vigor and was legendary in his defense of high Islamic goals and his defense of the Lebanese people who resist oppression and terrorism.”
