Illustrative image (The Israeli Defense Forces)
A recent Israeli strike on Syria killed senior Hezbollah commander Ali Mussa Daqduq, NBC News reported on November 22, citing a senior United States defense official.
Daqduq, also known as Abu Hussein Sajed, was wanted in the U.S. for attacks against American troops in Iraq, including planning a sophisticated attack in Karbala in 2007 that resulted in the deaths of five U.S. service members.
According to the U.S. Treasury Department, Daqduq has served “as commander of a Hezbollah special forces unit and chief of a protective detail for late Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah.” Daqduq was arrested in 2007 and imprisoned in Iraq, but was released five years later and sent to Lebanon.
After the outbreak of the war in Syria, Israel accused Daqduq of leading an elite force of Hezbollah situated along the front with the occupied Golan Heights.
The senior U.S. defense official who spoke to NBC News said that it was not clear when the Israeli strike took place, where in Syria or whether it targeted Daqduq specifically.
Reports of Daqduq’s death first emerged in Arab and Hebrew media following an Israeli strike that targeted a multi-story residential building in the Shiite town of Set Zaynab to the south of the Syrian capital, Damascus, on November 10. Hezbollah is known to maintain a strong presence in the town.
At the time, Syrian state media reported that seven civilians were killed in the strike. However, unofficial sources put the death toll at nine.
Israel has been targeting senior commanders of Hezbollah since the group began launching attacks from Lebanon in response to the war on the Gaza Strip last year. On September 27, the group took a heavy blow when its Secretary General Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli strike on the Lebanese capital, Beirut.
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