Hezbollah: Commander in Syria killed by ‘takfiri’ group

By Enes Kanli

BEIRUT

Lebanon’s Hezbollah said Saturday that one of the group’s senior commanders, Mustafa Badreddine, was killed near Damascus on Friday by a Syrian armed opposition faction.

"Ongoing investigations [have revealed that the blast] that targeted one of our centers near the Damascus International Airport and led to the martyrdom of leader Sayyed Mustafa Badreddine was the result of an artillery bombardment carried out by takfiri groups present in the region," the statement read, without specifying the group in question.

In this context, "Takfiri" refers to individuals or groups perceived to have abandoned the right teachings of Islam.

On Friday, Hezbollah announced that Badreddine had been killed on Tuesday in a blast near Damascus International Airport.

Badreddine had been serving as a field commander in Syria since 2011.

He was earlier accused by an international tribunal of involvement in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri.

Badreddine has been a leading member of Hezbollah since the group’s establishment in the mid-1980s, following the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.