BEIRUT — A car bomb explosion in Damascus killed Imad Moughnieh, the alleged mastermind of the 1980s bombings of a Marine barracks and the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon, a news outlet controlled by the Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah reported today.
Moughnieh, born in 1962, was an elusive Lebanese national and Hezbollah leader long sought by U.S. and Israeli officials. He was allegedly responsible for a string of assassinations and kidnappings of Westerners in Lebanon during the tumultuous latter years of the country's civil war.
The U.S. offered $25 million for his capture because of his alleged involvement in the hijacking of a TWA airliner in 1985. Western intelligence agencies have also blamed him for the early-1990s bombings of the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 130 people.
He has been described as Hezbollah's chief of special operations and was believed to be one of the main security officials supervising the militant group's fight against Israeli troops in the summer of 2006. He was implicated in the 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 Americans, as well as the bombing earlier that year of the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon.
Two of Moughnieh's brothers were killed in earlier attacks widely attributed to Israeli clandestine services.
Walid Sharara, a Beirut-based political analyst who is an expert on Hezbollah, said Moughnieh was one of the organization's main military leaders.
"With pride and honor, we announce the martyrdom of a great resistance leader who joined the procession of martyrs in the Islamic resistance," said a statement read on Al Manar, Hezbollah's satellite TV channel, and published on its website.
Hezbollah as well as its patron, Iran, blamed Israel for the attack. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Hosseini condemned the bombing as "a blatant example of Israeli state terrorism," according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
Israel denied responsibility.
"Israel is looking into the reports from Lebanon and Syria regarding the death of a senior Hezbollah figure and is studying the details," said a statement released by the office of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. "Israel rejects the attempt by terrorist elements to ascribe to it any involvement whatsoever in this incident."
A Syrian human rights organization said the bombing took place in Damascus' upscale Kafar Soussa district. Other news agencies reported that the blast occurred just before 11 p.m. Tuesday.
Syrian police sealed off the area. A crushed Mitsubishi vehicle was seen being removed from the scene, media reports said.
Hezbollah announced a public demonstration in its south Beirut stronghold amid calls for revenge.
"We call on the Islamic resistance to avenge this operation and deal a painful blow to the Zionist entity," Sheik Fathi Yakan, a Sunni cleric in northern Lebanon, said in a statement distributed by Lebanon's state news agency.
Special correspondent Rafei reported from Beirut and Times staff writer Daragahi from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Richard Boudreaux in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
