Hezbollah commander killed in air strike

Top Hezbollah commander Mustafa Amine Badreddine was killed on Tuesday night in an air strike in Syria this week, the Lebanon-based Shia militant organisation says.

Badreddine died in a large explosion near Damascus airport, Hezbollah said in a statement on the website of its al-Manar network.

Hezbollah is a Shia Islamist political, military and social organisation that wields considerable power in Lebanon. It emerged with the help of Iran during the Israeli occupation of Lebanon in the early 1980s. The group is currently fighting in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

"Badreddine took part in most of the operations of the Islamic resistance since 1982," Hezbollah said in a statement announcing his death on Friday, describing him as "the great jihadi leader".

Badreddine was sentenced to death in Kuwait for his role in bomb attacks there in 1983. He had escaped from a Kuwaiti prison after Iraq invaded the country in 1990 under the leadership of Saddam Hussein.

Badreddine was also accused, along with three other alleged Hezbollah members, of assassinating former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut in 2005.

Hezbollah’s second statement on al-Manar's website, said: "The investigation will work on determining the nature of the explosion and its causes and whether it was a result of an air, missile or artillery attack. We will announce further results of the investigations soon."