Top Syrian Army Officer and Liaison with Hizbullah Killed, Report
A senior Syrian army officer believed to be Damascus” liaison with Hizbullah in Lebanon has been assassinated, Arab media reported on Sunday.
The reports came almost six months after the killing in a Damascus car bomb of top Hizbullah military commander Imad Mughniyeh, Hizbullah blamed on Israel.
The pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat on Sunday, citing informed sources, said that a senior Syrian officer had been found dead.
"The circumstances of the incident are not clear," the London-based paper said in its report, which said the sources suggested that the slain officer had been "in charge of sensitive files and closely linked to the Syrian top brass."
A media report named the officer as Mohammed Suleiman and said he was "Syria”s liaison officer with Lebanon”s Hizbullah movement."
It said he was killed by a sniper in the northwest Syrian town of Tartus and would be buried in his hometown of Driekesh on Sunday.
Al-Mustaqbal newspaper quoted a Syrian news site as saying Suleiman was the head of security at the presidential palace in Damascus and President Bashar al-Assad”s "right-hand man."
The paper made no mention of Hizbullah in its report.
A Hizbullah official told AFP in Lebanon that he did not know Mohammed Suleiman and had not heard about any killing.
Israel has denied the Hizbullah charge that it was behind the assassination of Mughniyeh in the Syrian capital on February 12.