DAMASCUS, Syria — One of the world’s most-wanted terrorists, Imad Mughniyeh, was killed in a car bombing in Syria nearly 15 years after he dropped from sight. The one-time Hezbollah security chief was the suspected mastermind of attacks that killed hundreds of Americans in Lebanon and of the brutal kidnappings of Westerners.
The Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah and its top ally, Iran, blamed Israel on Wednesday for the assassination.
Mughniyeh was also on the FBI’s list of most wanted terrorists, and the U.S. State Department had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest or conviction. He was indicted in the U.S. for his alleged role in planning the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner in which a U.S. Navy diver was killed.
The United States welcomed Mughniyeh’s death. “The world is a better place without this man in it,” a State Department spokesman said. “One way or the other, he was brought to justice.”
The hijacking was the only attack on Americans for which Mughniyeh was charged, but he was thought to have carried out or directed a series of attacks aimed at the United States and Jewish targets.
Mughniyeh’s death was the latest in a series of blows to major terror figures in recent weeks. Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al-Qaida leader, was killed in Pakistan in late January by a missile fired from a U.S. drone. This week, Pakistani security forces critically wounded and captured Mansour Dadullah, a top Taliban figure, in a firefight near the Afghan border.
But Mughniyeh, a Shiite Muslim not known to be connected to the Sunni al-Qaida or Taliban, harkened to an earlier era of terror. A secretive, underground operator whose name was not even known for years, he was one of the first to turn Islamic militancy’s weapons against the United States in the 1980s.
Witnesses said the explosion tore apart his Mitsubishi, killing a passerby and leaving only the front of the SUV intact.
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