Hizbollah commander Badreddine ‘killed by rebel shelling’

Hizbollah’s top military commander Mustafa Badreddine was killed by artillery shells fired by insurgents near Syria’s Damascus airport, the Lebanese group says.

Hizbollah supporters carry the coffin of their slain top commander Mustafa Badreddine during his funeral in a southern suburb of Beirut on Friday, May 13, 2016. Hassan Ammar / AP Photo

Beirut // Hizbollah on Saturday said the death of its top military commander in Syria was caused by an artillery strike by Sunni extremists, although a monitoring group said no such an attack had been heard in the area he was killed.

“An investigation has shown that the blast that targeted one of our positions near the Damascus international airport that led to the martyrdom of the brother commander Mustafa Badreddine was caused by artillery bombardment carried out by takfiri groups present in that region,” the Lebanese Shiite militant group said.

It did not name any specific group, and there has been no claim of responsibility.

Hizbollah has been battling opponents of president Bashar Al Assad’s regime including extremists from ISIL and Jabhat Al Nusra, Al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate.

A Syrian security source said Badreddine was in a warehouse near the airport when it was rocked by a blast on Thursday night and that no aircraft was heard before the explosion.

The head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdelrahman, said no artillery fire had been heard in the area either in the past three days.

Hizbollah announced Badreddine’s death on Friday but without immediately apportioning blame, breaking with its usual pattern of accusing arch-foe Israel of responsibility.

The extremist group ISIL, meanwhile, seized a government-controlled hospital in Deir Ezzor on Saturday as it pressed an advance aimed at controlling all of the eastern oil-rich city and its vital air base, the Observatory said.

The attack sparked clashes with regime forces providing security for the hospital in which six extremists were killed, the monitor said.

“ISIL attacked Al Assad hospital at the city’s western entrance, killing at least 20 soldiers and allied fighters,” Mr Abdelrahman said.

The militants “seized the hospital and captured the medical staff, holding them hostage”, he said, adding that fighting was still raging.

ISIL controls about 60 per cent of Deir Ezzor, including the centre and the north of the city.

It has imposed a siege on government-held districts in the south and the east where about 200,000 civilians have been trapped since March 2014.

In the northern city of Aleppo, where a ceasefire expired on Wednesday at midnight, the Observatory reported seven civilians killed in 48 hours of rebel shelling of government-held western sectors.

The Observatory also reported heavy fighting on the edge of rebel-held Daraya near Damascus, besieged by government forces since 2012 and where a Red Cross operation to deliver humanitarian aid this week was thwarted.

The US secretary of state John Kerry was due to arrive in Saudi Arabia on Saturday to consult with his Arab ally ahead of international talks in Vienna on Tuesday to salvage efforts to end Syria’s five-year conflict, which has killed more than 270,000 people and displaced millions.

The US and Saudi Arabia have supported rebels seeking to oust Mr Al Assad, who backed by Russia, Iran and the Iran-backed Hizbollah.

The group has deployed thousands of fighters in Syria under Badreddine. In its statement on Saturday, a day after thousands attended Badreddine’s funeral in Beirut, Hizbollah vowed no let-up in its war against “criminal gangs” in Syria.

Badreddine was on a US terror sanctions list, a key suspect in the 2005 assassination in Beirut of Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri, and one of Israel’s “most wanted”.

His predecessor, cousin and brother-in-law Imad Mughniyeh, was killed in Damascus in a 2008 bombing that Hizbollah blamed on Israel.

Hizbollah has also accused Israel of killing another of its prominent figures, Samir Kantar, in an air strike last December near Damascus.

Expert Waddah Charara says Hizbollah has sent between 5,000 and 6,000 combatants to Syria.

Between 1,000 and 2,000 of its fighters have been killed in combat there, other experts say.

* Agence France-Presse