MESOP FLASH: TOP HEZBOLLAH COMMANDER NOT KILLED BY ISRAELI FORCES

Mustafa Amine Badreddine, who was believed to be Hezbollah’s top military commander, was killed on Tuesday in an explosion near the Damascus airport, according to a statement by Hezbollah. Some Arab media reports have attributed the blast to an Israeli airstrike but social media accounts associated with Syrian rebel groups have claimed that he was actually killed south of Aleppo and that Syrian rebels were responsible for the attack.

Badreddine has been involved in Hezbollah’s military operations since 1982 and was a close associate and relative of Imad Mughniyeh, who previously held Hezbollah’s top military post until he was assassinated by a car bomb in Damascus in 2008. He was indicted by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon as the mastermind of the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and was involved in the 1982 Beirut barracks bombing and bombings in Kuwait in 1983 targeting U.S. and French diplomats.

Elsewhere in Syria, Assad regime troops turned back an aid convoy outside of the besieged neighborhood of Daraya, in Damascus, and then shelled residents who had gathered to meet the convoy. Separately, Amnesty International accused rebel groups besieging the Kurdish neighborhood of Sheikh Maqsoud, Aleppo, of indiscriminate shelling of civilian targets, including the possible use of chemical weapons. Reads more www.mesop.de