IDF says it has killed Hezbollah commander who murdered Lebanese prime minister

A Hezbollah commander convicted for the 2005 murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri was killed in a recent Israeli airstrike in Syria, Arab media reported on Sunday.

Salim Jamil Ayyashm, a senior member of the Iranian terror proxy's assassinations unit (Unit 121), was reportedly eliminated near the Syrian city of al-Qusayr in the Homs region.

In 2020, he was sentenced in absentia to five life sentences by the UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon for his role in the assassination of Hariri, who was killed along with 21 others by a car bomb in Beirut on Feb. 14, 2005.

The US State Department had offered a $10 million reward for information on his whereabouts.

On Sunday, Al-Arabiya reported that the head of Hezbollah's "Golan file" had been killed in an Israeli strike in Damascus earlier in the day.

Ali Daqduq, known as Abu Hussein, held various operational roles with Hezbollah since 1983. In 2006, he was sent to Iraq to aid Shi'ite militias in fighting the United States. He was captured by American forces in Basra and handed over to Iraqi authorities, who released him, after which he returned to Lebanon.

The Americans allege that he was involved in an attack on the Karbala Provincial Coordination Centre in which five American soldiers were killed.

"The IDF Spokesperson disclosed that upon his return to Lebanon, Daqduq was appointed to head the training of Hezbollah’s special forces until 2018, when he was named commander of the 'Golan File," according to Channel 12. "This infrastructure includes numerous operatives residing in villages in [Syria's] northern Golan, equipped with weaponry and positioned close to the border fence."