Bomb kills Syria's Osama
Updated on 13 February 2008
Hezbollah's Imad Moughniyah, implicated in the bombing of the US barracks in Beirut in 1983 that killed hundreds, dies in a blast in Syria.
The blast happened overnight in a well-to-do district in Damascus. Hezbollah swiftly accused Israel of assassinating Moughniyah.
While tonight the Syrian Interior Minister called it a "terrorist act".
Before bin Laden turned up, the man nicknamed Tha'alab, The Fox , was blamed for killing more Americans than any other. He was one of America's most wanted.
At 10.45pm last night in the smart Damascus neighbourhood of Kafar Soussa, a fox hunt that had lasted for a quarter of a century finally came to a sudden and bloody end.
Imad Fayez Moughniyeh, the secretive and elusive Hezbollah head of security, known by his enemies as the master-terrorist, had a $25m price on his head.
Today Washington welcomed his death. Iran blamed Israel and Israel denied it.
Syria has said nothing. State security quickly sealed off the area and removed the wrecked car.
By this morning, Hezbollah's Al Manar TV, broadcasting out of Lebanon, was lamenting Moughniyeh's "martyrdom" at the hands of what the newscaster called "the prophet-killers who cause death and destruction on earth." Read for that: Israel.
Moughniyeh had a pretty strong death and destruction CV himself - the charge sheet, a tour de force of chilling pre-9/11 late twentieth century bombings and kidnaps and hijacks.
On 23 October 1983, Moughniyeh allegedly plotted the twin suicide truck-bomb attacks in Beirut which killed 242 US marines and 58 French paratroopers who were part of the multinational force in Lebanon.
Six months earlier, Mougneiyeh was blamed for the attack on the US embassy there, which killed 63, including top CIA operations men and agents.
Then came the kidnaps. Bill Buckley, the Beirut CIA station chief, whom the CIA now believes was tortured to death by Moughniyeh personally.
Terry Anderson, Middle East correspondent for Associated Press, was released after six years and nine months in captivity.
In June 1985 during the highjack of TWA Flight 847, Moughniyeh, wearing a ski-mask, prowled the aisles looking for United States military personnel.
He found one, tortured and shot him, finally releasing 39 other Americans after 17 sweltering days on the tarmac.
Also in Moughniyeh's hall of notoriety are his alleged roles in the bombings in Buenos Aires of the Israeli embassy in 1992 and a Jewish community centre there two years later.
Moughniyeh linked to many other atrocities, branded a clinical psychopath, was said of late to have worked hand in glove with bin Laden.
Channel 4 News has learned from a senior source in the Iranian leadership though that many of these more recent links are probably fanciful.
Alon Ben David, an Israeli military analyst said:
"After many years that Hezbollah was inflicting agony and pain on the Israeli side. It is unusual that we have a day like this when Israel can smile while Beirut and Lebanon are mourning and feeling the taste of loss. But I think that Israel should not rejoice for a long time because retaliation from Hezbollah will soon occur."
That's exactly what Hezbollah's threatening tonight, while in his hometown of Tyre they mourn the demise of their own Palestinian Lebanese Spartacus.
In Beirut, the great and the good of Hezbollah gathered in a hall of condolence to mourn Moughniyeh, a man described by Bob Baer, a former CIA Middle East man who chased him for years, as "the most dangerous, most capable terrorist we've ever faced."
He'll be buried tomorrow. The United States State Department called him a cold blooded killer and said the world's a better place without Moughniyeh in it. But in the lands of an eye-for-an-eye, the world's not necessarily safer.
