Last update - 02:16 18/02/2008
Barak: Iran, Syria could help avenge Mugniyah
By Yoav Stern and Barak Ravid
"It won't be long before the conceited Zionists realize that Imad Mughniyah's blood is extremely costly, and it makes history and brings about a new victory," Hezbollah's head of the southern Lebanon region, Sheikh Nabil Kauk, said yesterday at a memorial service for the arch-terrorist who was killed in a car explosion in Damascus last week.
Kauk, who spoke in Mughniyah's home village, Tayr Debba, in south Lebanon, added that Israel was "standing on one leg of fear and trepidation, having become the hostage of its own act of stupidity."
Kauk spoke at a ceremony attended by the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, Hezbollah senior officials and representatives from the Amal terrorist group, Fatah and representatives from the Lebanese army.
'No worthy replacement'
Defense Minister Ehud Barak also said yesterday that he anticipated Hezbollah would try to retaliate for the assassination, possibly with help from Syria and Iran. But he added that "it will take a long time before a worthy replacement is found to take Mughinyah's place."
Meanwhile, foreign media published details about the attack. The Kuwaiti daily Al-Rai reported that the hit was perpetrated by security personnel of "an Arab state that shares a border with Syria," using American technology.
The report said Mughniyah was killed by a blast from an explosive charge that contained 3,000 metal fragments, as he was passing near the car that carried the bomb.
The report added he was coming back from a meeting with a Palestinian official.
Gulf funding
The funding for the assassination, according to Al-Rai, came from one of the Gulf states. The final decision to carry out the attack came from Jerusalem, the paper claimed. Israel's Channel 2 said the assassination involved interested parties from Lebanon.
According to "informed Israel sources" cited by London's Sunday Times, it was Israel's Mossad spy agency that carried out the car bombing that killed Mughniyah.
The fatal explosion, the paper said, came from an explosive charge that had been planted in the headrest of the car Mughniyah was driving. The sources told the newspaper that Mughniyah had been cooperating with the Syrians in planning a major terrorist attack against Israel, in retaliation for a September 2007 Israeli air strike against a suspected nuclear facility deep inside Syria.