Now Lebanon: Hezbollah preparing imminent announcement on Badreddine killing

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Hezbollah preparing imminent announcement on Badreddine killing
Now Lebanon/May 13/16

The party said Mustafa Badreddine was killed in a “large explosion” outside Damascus International Airport, but did not immediately blame Israel.
Mustafa Badreddine.

BEIRUT – Hezbollah is set to reveal the results of its investigation into Mustafa Badreddine’s assassination, hours after announcing that its top commander in Syria was killed in a “large explosion” outside Damascus. “We will announce within hours, and in details, who is responsible for the blast,” the party’s deputy chief, Sheikh Naim Qassem, said during the funeral held for Badreddine late Friday afternoon in the southern Beirut suburb of Ghobeiry. He stressed that the announcement would come no later than Saturday morning, adding that Hezbollah already had “clear indications” who perpetrated the killing, and its method of attack . Qassem, who was leading prayers at the cermony, reiterated that Israel was Hezbollah’s top enemy, however he was careful to say that his party had “several theories” regarding the assasinaton.

“We did not want to announce the killers before we finished our investigation,” the Hezbollah figure explained. Badreddine, who was indicted by an international court for the 2005 assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri, will be buried alongside Imad Mughniyeh—his predecessor in Hezbollah—in the Rawda Martyrs Cemetery. Friday’s funeral comes only hours after Hezbollah made the shock announcement that a “large explosion targeted one of [its] centers near Damascus International Airport, leading to the martyrdom of Badreddine and the injury of several others.”The Shiite party—which is fighting in Syria on behalf of the Bashar al-Assad regime—did not immediately blame its arch-foe Israel for the killing, saying instead it will investigate the blast to determine its cause.

“We will soon announce more results of the investigation,” Hezbollah said, adding that it was looking into whether the deadly explosion was caused by an air strike, missile or artillery fire. Shortly before Hezbollah’s statement, the Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen television, which has an editorial line supportive of the party, reported that Badreddine had been killed in an Israeli strike against his residence near the Damascus International Airport. Hezbollah heaped praise on its slain commander, saying that he came back to Lebanon “a martyr wrapped in the banner of victory… in the face of the bitter struggle against takfiri groups in Syria, which form the spearhead of the US-Zionist project in the region.”“After a life of jihad, imprisonment, wounds and major achievements, [Badreddine] has concluded his life in martyrdom.”Badreddine is the latest Hezbollah official killed in Syria.

On December 19, 2015, Samir Kuntar—a Lebanese Druze figure involved with the party’s operations in the Syrian Golan—was killed in a purported Israeli airstrike, prompting Hezbollah to target an Israeli patrol along the border with a roadside bomb two weeks later. In response, Israel shelled targets in southern Lebanon; however the cross-border hostilities did not escalate. Israel and Hezbollah previously clashed along the southern Lebanese border on January 28, 2015, when the Shiite party launched a deadly rocket attack on an IDF patrol ten days after an Israeli airstrike killed a number of top Hezbollah and Iranian officers in Quneitra.

Wanted by the STL, fighting in Syria
Last year, a Lebanese daily close to Hezbollah admitted that Badreddine was playing a key role in the party’s fight in Syria. In a column published July 27, Al-Akhbar editor-in-chief Ibrahim al-Amine lauded Mustafa Badreddine, who was indicted in 2011 by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon for the killing of Hariri and labeled by the prosecution as the organizer of the bombing, which killed 22 people in Beirut. The column, which comes a week after Washington slapped new sanctions against Badreddine, accused Hezbollah’s enemies of attempting to “tarnish the image” of top party members, including Badreddine. “With the outbreak of the crisis in Syria, a new page in the confrontation [with Hezbollah’s enemies] was opened,” Amine argued. The Al-Akhbar editor-in-chief wrote that Badreddine was “leading the resistance groups that fight alongside the Syrian army in more than one part of the country.” “He has also led security and military activity which aims, not only to thwart the plans of the traditional enemies of Syria and the resistance, but to deliver direct blows to Takfiri as well.” The column added that Badreddine’s colleagues quote the Hezbollah official as vowing: “It is my duty to confront all the projects of those people, and the only way I will leave my work in Lebanon or Syria or any other theater is carried [home] as a martyr or carrying the banner of victory.”