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Hizbullah Accuses Israel, hizbollah politburo director kaboomed in same blast

by Hana Levi Julian

The Hizbullah terrorist organization late Tuesday night lost a top commander in a powerful car bombing the group said was carried out by Israeli operatives in Damascus. Journalists were prevented by Syrian police from approaching the vehicle following the blast. Imad Mughniyeh, considered to be the mastermind behind most, if not all of Hizbullahs terror attacks, was one of the groups most senior commanders in Lebanon. He lived in hiding for years and was able to evade the public eye until Tuesday nights attack.

An unconfirmed report by Iranian sources said Hajj Hussein Halil, politburo director and deputy to Hizbullah chief terrorist Hassan Nasrallah, also was killed in Tuesday night's car bombing. Hizbullah has not commented.

"We got nuttin' to say!"

Mughniyeh was involved in numerous terror attacks on Israel's border with Lebanon, including the kidnapping of IDF soldiers Benny Avraham, Adi Avitan and Omar Souad. He was also apparently behind the abduction of IDF reservists Elad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser in July 2006, the cross-border raid that ignited the Second lebanon War.

He was indicted in the US for the 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847, in which the airliners passengers were held hostage for six days at the Beirut airport. The Hizbullah terrorists severely beat US Navy diver Robert Stethem, a passenger on the June 24 flight, before killing him and dumping his body onto the tarmac. The dead terrorist was on the US governments Most Wanted List for having organized an attack on a US Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. The October 23 car bombing killed 241 American military personnel who were stationed in Beirut as part of a peace-keeping force.

That's something that's seldom brought up: the Marines weren't there as an occupying force, but as peacekeepers. In fact, they were remarkably even-handed, and had several fairly tense run-ins with the Israelis.

Mughniyeh was also behind the 1994 attack on the Jewish-Argentine Mutual Association (AMIA) Community Center in Buenos Aires. Eighty-five people were murdered and 300 others were wounded in the attack. He has been the target of the Zionists for 20 years, the Hizbullah terrorist organization said in a statement to the media that claimed Mughniyeh became a Martyr at the hands of the Zionist Israelis.

He was also Hizbullah's main liaison with the terrorist group's main patron, Iran. The Islamic Republic provides massive support in the form of funding, equipment, weaponry and terrorist training to the group, as does Syria. Both countries have remained silent on the assassination.

The bombing is also likely to cause further upheavel in the current political crisis in Lebanon, which has been wracked by conflict between pro- and anti-Syrian forces. Anti-Syrian parties have fought off attempts by Hizbullah to increase its power in the Lebanese Cabinet. The impasse has forced a delay in Lebanon's presidential elections by several months.
Posted by: anonymous5089 2008-02-13

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