Terror Chief Killed in Syria

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From The Press Association: One of the world's most-wanted terrorists has been killed in a car bomb explosion in the Syrian capital Damascus. Imad Mughniyeh, who had a US bounty of 25 million dollars (£12.2 million) on his head, is suspected in the killings of hundreds of Americans as well as a series of attacks against US, Israeli and Jewish targets. Mughniyeh, a top figure in the Iranian and Syrian-backed Shiite Hezbollah militant group, was one of the most notorious terror figures of the 1980s and 1990s but had virtually vanished in the past 15 years.

He was implicated in the 1983 bombings of the US Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut that killed more than 300 people, the 1985 hijacking of a TWA flight in which an American Navy diver was killed and the kidnappings of numerous Americans in Lebanon.

Hezbollah blamed Israel for his death but Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said it "rejects the attempt by terror groups to attribute to it any involvement in this incident". The blast was the first major attack against a leader of Hezbollah since a 1992 helicopter strike that killed the organisation's secretary-general Sheik Abbas Mussawi in southern Lebanon. A prominent Shiite Muslim cleric close to Hezbollah called for the group's military wing to retaliate.

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From Haaretz: If anyone deserved the title of "the serpent's head," it was Imad Mughniyah, who was killed Tuesday evening in a mysterious bomb blast in a residential neighborhood of Damascus. He was on the list of terrorists most wanted by Western intelligence services - primarily Washington and Jerusalem. Mughniyah, who was 45 years old when he died, was one of Israel's most dangerous enemies. He was to Israel what Osama Bin Laden is to the United States.

If Israel is behind this incident, as suggested by most world experts, it can be seen as the most significant intelligence accomplishment in the war on terror - even more significant than the assassination of Fathi Shikaki, leader of the Islamic Jihad, in 1995.

Mughniyah, who hailed from a poor Shi'ite family from southern Lebanon, started his career as a terrorist with Fatah, where he served as a low-ranking militant. He helped found Hezbollah when the Shi'ite organization was first formed, as early as 1983. He was generally recognized as a determined operative, ruthless, ambitious and persistent. Mughniyah, more than anyone else, can be credited with bringing Hezbollah's military wing to the level of performance the organization demonstrated during the Second Lebanon War. In fact, Mughniyah has been described by leading experts on Hezbollah as the man responsible for the attack on July 12, 2006, which resulted in the death of eight Israel Defense Forces soldiers, and the abduction of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev - the event that sparked the war.

His greatest achievements included forming Hezbollah's wing for carrying out terrorist attacks abroad, as well as forging Hezbollah's special relationship with the Iranian intelligence establishment. At the time of his death, Mughniyah was believed to have had strong ties with Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps' military wing, the "Al-Quds" force. It was through this cooperation that Mughniyah was able to carry out the terrorist attacks in Buenos Aires. In 1992, Hezbollah struck the Israeli embassy in Argentina, and in 1994 it bombed Buenos Aires' Jewish community center. The attacks killed more than 100 people.

Ron Arad, an Israel Air Force navigator went missing in action over Lebanese territory in 1988, and is believed to have been abducted by Hezbollah after abandoning his plane. Mughniyah is believed to have been responsible for transferring Arad to the Iranians.

Mughniyah has lived most of his life in the secret world of intelligence and terrorism. According to various reports, the international hunt drove Mughniyah to frequently change identities, and he even underwent plastic surgery to change his appearance. These procedures, along with a collection of fake passports, reportedly allowed Mughniyah to travel with relative ease throughout the Arab world.

Imad Mughniyah was high on the FBI's wanted list as well, for his involvement in the kidnapping of a TWA airliner to Beirut in 1985, where an American Navy diver, Robert Stethem, was beaten, shot in the right temple, and dumped out of the plane onto the tarmac. Mughniyah also was involved in planning and carrying out several kidnappings of Westerners in Lebanon at that time. He is believed to be behind a 1983 bombing at the U.S. embassy in Beirut, which killed 63 people.