Top Hezbollah Operative Is Killed in Syria

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A senior Hezbollah military commander, who was one of America’s most wanted men for his alleged links to a string of bombings, hijackings and kidnappings during the 1980s and 1990s, has been killed, the Shiite Muslim group said in a statement Wednesday. Hezbollah accused Israel of orchestrating the killing.

Security officials in Lebanon said the man, Imad Mugniyah, died in a car bomb attack in Damascus, Syria, on Tuesday night...

Israel officially distanced itself from the killing and said that it was looking into the attack in Syria, without specifically naming Mr. Mugniyah. “Israel rejects the attempt by terrorist elements to ascribe to it any involvement whatsoever in this incident,” the office of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in a statement.

But some former Israeli security officials did not hide their satisfaction at Mr. Mugniyah’s assassination. Danny Yatom, a Labor parliamentarian and former chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, called Mr. Mugniyah’s death "a great achievement for the free world in its fight on terror."

Mr. Mugniyah was one of the world’s most wanted men, with at one point an American price tag on his head of $25 million. He was charged with the terrorist hijacking of a T.W.A. jetliner in 1985 and implicated among other things in shipments of arms from Iran to the Palestinians.

American officials assert that Mr. Mugniyah was behind the bombings of the United States Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983.

A car bomb at the embassy in April that year killed 63 people, including 17 Americans, while a truck bomb in October at the Marine compound killed 241 American troops.

The United States also assert he was behind the torture and murder of William Buckley, the C.I.A. station chief in Beirut, in 1984; the kidnapping and murder of Lt. Col. William Richard Higgins of the Marines, who was on peacekeeping duty in Lebanon in 1988; and, through the Islamic Jihad Organization, the seizure of Western hostages in Beirut during the 1980s.

Gideon Ezra, a minister from Israel’s governing Kadima party and former deputy chief of the Shin Bet internal intelligence agency, told Israel Radio Wednesday that many countries had an interest in killing Mr. Mugniyah but that “Israel too was hurt by him, more than other countries in recent years."

Mr. Ezra said, "Of course I don’t know who killed him, but whoever did should be congratulated."

As well as being described as an arch-terrorist with strong links to Iran, Mr. Mugniyah was believed in Israel to be a master of disguises who may have undergone several rounds of plastic surgery in order to evade capture.

His organization may also have played a role in the bombing of the Khobar Towers military residence in Saudi Arabia in 1996, in which 17 Americans were killed.

The United States has charged that a group known as Saudi Hezbollah, with backing from Iranian officials, was behind the truck bomb. But one American intelligence report says that Talal Hamiyah, a senior lieutenant under Mr. Mugniyah, was involved in the Saudi Hezbollah group during the 1990s.

In May 1996, the lieutenant to Mr. Mugniyah told a colleague that the Islamic Jihad Organization, an offshoot of Hezbollah controlled by Mr. Mugniyah, was prepared to carry out terrorist operations before that year’s election in Israel, but had been directed not to do so by Iran.

Mr. Mugniyah is also wanted for the hijacking in June 1985 of the T.W.A. flight. During the hijacking, an American was killed and 39 Americans were held hostage for 17 days. It is the only terrorist action for which he has been indicted in the United States.

Hamas, the militant Islamic group that controls Gaza, joined Hezbollah in blaming Israel for Mr. Mugniyah’s death, calling it a "new example of Zionist gangster-ism."

A Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Sami Abu Zuhri, called on the Muslim and Arab world to unite against what it called the "Zionist octopus that threatens the security of Arab and Muslim countries."

In 2002, Central Intelligence Agency documents showed Mr. Mugniyah had been operating for years with the protection and backing of the Iranian intelligence services.

American intelligence officials have said that they had sometimes received credible tips about Mr. Mugniyah’s presence in Beirut, but the United States had never attempted to bomb his hideouts or to capture him, according to former American intelligence officials.

In one instance, in the early 1990’s, the United States found that Mr. Mugniyah was on a commercial flight that stopped in Saudi Arabia, but Saudi officials refused to arrest him and allowed him to leave the country, they said.

The statement from the Israeli government said that "Israel is looking into the reports from Lebanon and Syria regarding the death of a senior Hezbollah figure and is studying the details" as they were being reported in the news media.

---NY TIMES

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