Can't say I'll shed any tears for his passing, but neither is this going to make the situation any calmer.
Hezbollah said Wednesday its Deputy Secretary General Imad Mughniyah was killed Tuesday evening in a bomb blast in a residential neighborhood of Damascus, accusing Israel of being behind the explosion.
"With all pride we declare a great jihadist leader of the Islamic resistance in Lebanon joining the martyrs ... The brother commander hajj Imad Mughinyah became a martyr at the hands of the Zionist Israelis," said a statement carried on Hezbollah's television.
Prime Minsiter's Office spokesman Mark Regev declined comment. "We have released no statement on this matter," he said.
Mughniyah headed Hezbollah's operations branch serving in a role similar to chief of staff, and had been wanted by Israel and the United States for years due to his role in numerous bombings, hijackings and abductions in which hundreds of people were killed.
Mughniyah, his deputy Talal Hamiya and Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah topped Israel's list of most wanted terrorists. He also appears on the FBI's list of most wanted terrorists and has a $25-million price on his head.
He was wanted for the bombings of the Israeli embassy and the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994, as well as a wave of abductions of Westerns in Lebanon in the 1980s.
He was also responsible for the 1985 hijacking of a TWA passenger jet, and the murder of a soldier in the U.S. navy.
Mughniyah lived a highly secretive life, constantly moving between states like Lebanon, Iran, and Syria.
In the past, in the 1990's, according to foreign reports, the Mossad tried to assassinate him in a complex operation in southern Beirut.
However, the operation killed his brother, a car shop owner in Beirut. Mughniyah was expected to be present at the funeral, giving an additional chance to assassinate him, but he never showed.
The cause of the Damascus explosion, which occurred about 10:45 P.M. Tuesday evening in the upscale Kafar Soussa neighborhood, was not immediately known.
Security forces quickly sealed off the area and removed the destroyed car, which had its driver's seat and the rear seat blown away by the force of the blast.
Residents, some in their pajamas, gathered to inspect the damage, careful
around shards of glass and debris. Three other cars parked nearby were also damaged, their windows shattered and doors blown out.
"I was awakened by the explosion, rushed to the window and saw the glow," one witness said. He lost the windows on his 5th floor apartment, which overlooks the bombed-out SUV.
Another witness in a 7th floor apartment rushed to the windows after the blast and said he "saw one (body) covered with a white sheet on the ground."
Both spoke on condition of anonymity.
The witnesses and Palestinian sources in Syria and Lebanon said the blast was caused by a bomb planted inside the vehicle.
Israeli 'analysis
If there is a definition for the term "the snake's head," it is Imad Mughniyah, who started his terrorist activities as a militant with Fatah, and joined Hezbollah afterwards with the establishment of the Shi'ite organization.
He first started as head of security for Hezbollah, afterwards leading their operational command, until he reached his current status of a type of "super chief of staff."
In past years he saw himself as the probable successor to Nasrallah in leading Hezbollah, leaving the shadowy world where he lived most of his life. According to different reports, because of the international chase after him, Mughniyah frequently changed identities and even went through numerous plastic surgeries.
Imad Mughniyah was the number one wanted terrorist on Israel's list, ahead of Hassan Nasrallah.
[snip]
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 one of the passengers was killed. He was also involved with planning and carrying out a number of kidnappings of Westerners in Lebanon in those same years. He started the international terror attacks of the organization
