HEZBOLLAH SAYSTOP LEADER KILLED,BLAMES ISRAEL
BEIRUT, Dec 04, 2013 (AFP) - Hezbollah said Wednesday one of its top leaders was killed near Beirut, and blamed Israel, at a time of soaring tensions in Lebanon linked to the war in neighbouring Syria.
The slain leader, identified as Hasan al-Laqqis, was the most senior figure in Hezbollah to be assassinated since Imad Mughniyeh was killed in a Damascus bombing in 2008, which the movement also accused Israel of carrying out.
Both men were part of Hezbollah's secretive top leadership, and Lakiss was virtually unknown before his death was made public.
“The Islamic resistance announces the death of one of its leaders, the martyr Hassan Hawlo al-Lakiss, who was assassinated near his house in the Hadath region” east of Beirut, said Hezbollah.
“Direct accusation is aimed of course against the Israeli enemy which had tried to eliminate our martyred brother again and again and in several places but had failed, until yesterday evening.
“This enemy must bear full responsibility for and all the consequences of this heinous crime,” Hezbollah said on its Al-Manar television channel without elaborating.
Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor dismissed the allegations as “yet another Pavlovian response from Hezbollah, which makes automatic accusations (against Israel) before even thinking about what's actually happened.” “Israel has nothing to do with this,” he said.
The Hezbollah channel said Laqiss had been shot repeatedly with a silenced handgun after parking his car in the building where he lived, adding that more than one assailant took part in the attack.
A source in the Shiite movement said Lakiss was close to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Hezbollah emerged during Lebanon's civil war in the 1980s with the aim of driving Israeli forces out of the country and battled the Jewish state to a bloody stalemate in 2006.