Hezbollah's most wanted commander killed in Syria bomb

By Laila Bassam and Nadim Ladki

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hezbollah leader Imad Moughniyah, on the United States' most wanted list for attacks on Israeli and Western targets, has been killed by a bomb attack in Damascus, the Lebanese group said on Wednesday.

Hezbollah accused Israel of assassinating Moughniyah, who was head of the Hezbollah security network during Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war, by planting a bomb in his car. In Gaza, Hamas Islamists called for the Arab world to unite against Israel.

Israel denied any involvement in the killing, seen as a major setback to Syrian and Iranian-backed Hezbollah that fought a 34-day war with Israel in 2006.

Moughniyah, 45, was killed late on Tuesday. He had long been on a list of foreigners Israel wanted to kill or apprehend and the United States had offered a $5 million reward for his capture.

"His killing is a huge blow to Hezbollah. It is very indicative," Magnus Ranstrop, terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defence College, told Reuters.

Moughniyah was implicated in the 1983 bombings of the U.S. embassy and U.S. Marine and French peacekeeping barracks in Beirut, which killed over 350 people, as well as the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and the kidnapping of Westerners in Lebanon in the 1980s.

The United States indicted him for his role in planning and participating in the June 14, 1985, hijacking of a U.S. TWA airliner and the killing of an American passenger.

"For the U.S. administration Imad was the most wanted terrorist before Osama Bin Laden appeared. For many years, many different teams were looking for him, trying to exact the price for the catalogue of attacks he allegedly carried out," Ranstrop said.