Arch-terrorist Imad Mugniyah killed in blast
Senior Hizbullah military leader believed to be the mastermind behind attacks against Jewish center in Buenos Aires in 1994 and US military barracks in Beirut in 1983 killed in mysterious blast in Damascus. Hizbullah blames Israel

By News agencies
February 13, 2008

Imad Mugniyah (File Photo)

Imad Mugniyah, a terrorist mastermind on American and European Union most wanted lists, was killed in a blast in Damascus on Tuesday, according to a report by Hizbullah's Al-Manar television station.

The militant Shiite organization said Mugniyah was assassinated by Israeli agents.

Mugniyah, who has been in hiding for years, was among the fugitives indicted in the United States for the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner in which a US Navy diver was killed and the abduction of westerners in the country during the 1980s.

The United States considers Mugniyah to be the man behind the bombing at the American embassy in Beirut and the attack against the US Marines' headquarters in Lebanon in 1983, which killed over 200 Americans.

"With all pride we declare a great jihadist leader of the Islamic resistance in Lebanon joining the martyrs ... The brother commander hajj Imad Mugniyah became a martyr at the hands of the Zionist Israelis," said a statement carried on Hizbullah's television.

The statement did not say how he was killed, but the announcement came a few hours after a late night explosion in Damascus destroyed a vehicle. Witnesses in Damascus said at the time that a passerby was killed as security forces sealed off the area.

Mugniyah (at the back) in the TWA airliner's cockpit - June 1985 (Photo: AFP)

Iran's English-language satellite station Press TV on Wednesday said the person slain in the Damascus explosion turned out to be Mugniyah. It said an Iranian school and a Syrian intelligence office were in the same area of Kafar Soussa where the explosion occurred.

Israel declined to comment on Mugniyah's death.

"We have released no statement on this matter," said Mark Regev, spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, after Hizbullah accused Israel of being behind Tuesday's attack.

Mugniyah is believed by Israel to have been involved in planning the 1992 bombing of Israel's embassy in Argentina in which 29 people were killed and the blast at a Buenos Aires Jewish center two years later that killed 95.

The Hizbullah commander was also involved in numerous terror attacks on Israel's border with Lebanon, including the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers Benny Avraham, Adi Avitan and Omar Souad, and apparently also the abduction of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.