{"id":33378,"date":"2017-03-22T10:08:17","date_gmt":"2017-03-22T10:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/israel-2016-killing-of-hezbollah-commander-inside\/"},"modified":"2017-03-22T10:08:14","modified_gmt":"2017-03-22T10:08:14","slug":"israel-2016-killing-of-hezbollah-commander-inside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/israel-2016-killing-of-hezbollah-commander-inside\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel: 2016 killing of Hezbollah commander inside job"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Israel’s military chief claims Hezbollah military commander in Syria was killed by members of his own group.}<\/p>\n

The chief of Israel’s armed forces has said that the death last year of a top Hezbollah commander in Syria was an assassination by the Iranian-backed Lebanese group itself.<\/p>\n

Hezbollah maintains that Mustafa Badreddine was killed near Damascus by artillery fire from rebel groups fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. But a war monitoring group said no rebel shelling occurred in the area at that time .<\/p>\n

Israeli Lieutenant-General Gadi Eisenkot told an academic conference on Tuesday that Badreddine’s death last May illustrated “the depth of the internal crisis of Hezbollah”. <\/p>\n

He said Israel “believes that he was killed by his own officers”.<\/p>\n

“Those findings show to what degree relations between Hezbollah and its patron Iran are tense and complex.”<\/p>\n

Hezbollah has deployed thousands of fighters in Syria, where Badreddine had led its intervention in support of Assad’s forces, which are also backed by Russia and Iran.<\/p>\n

Israeli intelligence claims Badreddine had been feuding with Iranian military commanders in Syria over the heavy losses his group had suffered on the battlefield.<\/p>\n

In Beirut, Mohammed Afif, a Hezbollah spokesman, said Israel’s allegations were “lies that do not deserve comment”.<\/p>\n

The US government has said Badreddine, 55, was in charge of Hezbollah’s military operations in Syria.<\/p>\n

He was one of five Hezbollah members indicted by the UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon in 2005 in connection to the killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri and 21 others.<\/p>\n

Hezbollah denied any involvement in Hariri’s killing and said the charges were politically motivated.<\/p>\n

For years, Badreddine masterminded military operations against Israel from Lebanon and overseas, and managed to evade capture by Arab and Western governments.<\/p>\n

Israel, which invaded Lebanon in 2006 to fight Hezbollah and has targeted the group in Syria over alleged arms transfers, called his death good news but stopped short of claiming responsibility.<\/p>\n

Badreddine was a student of Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah’s previous military chief, who was considered one of the world’s most-wanted terrorists by Israel and the United States. Mughniyeh, who was Badreddine’s brother-in-law, was killed in a 2008 car bombing in Damascus that Hezbollah blamed on Israel.<\/p>\n

In a letter written shortly after Baddredine’s death, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif extended condolences “for the martyrdom of this great jihadist … who embodied devotion and vigour and was legendary in his defence of high Islamic goals and his defence of the Lebanese people who resist oppression and terrorism”.<\/p>\n

\"Badreddine,<\/figure>\n

Source:Al Jazeera<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Israel’s military chief claims Hezbollah military commander in Syria was killed by members of his own group.} The chief of Israel’s armed forces has said that the death last year of a top Hezbollah commander in Syria was an assassination by the Iranian-backed Lebanese group itself. Hezbollah maintains that Mustafa Badreddine was killed near Damascus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[101],"byline":[160],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-33378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-internationl","byline-theophile-niyitegeka"],"bylines":[{"id":160,"name":"Th\u00e9ophile Niyitegeka","slug":"theophile-niyitegeka","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":3}],"contributors":[{"id":160,"name":"Th\u00e9ophile Niyitegeka","slug":"theophile-niyitegeka","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":3}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33378"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=33378"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=33378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}