Hezbollah fighters carry the coffin of Hassan al-Laqis, a senior
commander for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, who was gunned down
outside his home, during his funeral procession at his hometown in
Baalbek city, east Lebanon, Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2013. The assassination
was a major breach of the Shiite militant group's security as it
struggles to maintain multiple fronts while it fights alongside
President Bashar Assad's forces in Syria.
BAALBEK, LEBANON (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — The attackers waited in an
olive grove around midnight. As the Hezbollah commander pulled into the
garage of his nearby apartment building, they went in after him. Five
bullets were pumped into his head and neck from a silencer-equipped
pistol — an assassination that reverberated across the Middle East.
The killing early Wednesday of Hassan al-Laqis,
described as a member of the inner circle of Hezbollah leader Sheik
Hassan Nasrallah, was the latest in a series of recent attacks against
the Iranian-backed group.
Hezbollah blamed Israel, which denied involvement. However, the
Shiite militant group's open support of Syrian President Bashar Assad
has enraged Sunnis and left it with no shortage of enemies eager to
strike at its strongholds and leadership. Dozens of people have been
killed in deadly car bombings claimed by radical Sunni groups.
The group's participation in the civil war in Syria
is highly divisive and unpopular in Lebanon, where many feel it has
deviated from its raison d'etre of fighting Israel and exposed the
Shiite community to retaliation.
Most recently, two suicide bombers blew themselves
up outside the Iranian Embassy in Beirut, killing 23. An
al-Qaida-affiliated group claimed responsibility, saying it was payback
for Hezbollah's support of Assad.
Al-Laqis' killing came shortly after Nasrallah
accused Saudi Arabia of being behind the embassy bombings in a sharp
escalation in rhetoric against the Sunni regional powerhouse. In a
three-hour interview with a local TV station, he indirectly suggested an
alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia was trying to destabilize his
group.
The Saudi monarchy is engaged in a proxy war with
Iran over influence in the region, and in that, Riyadh has increasingly
found common ground with the Jewish state. "The assassination is another
notch in tensions between Hezbollah and Saudi Arabia," said Kamel
Wazne, founder of the Center for American Strategic Studies in Beirut.
"There will be repercussions. It's going to be more
like an open battle," he said. Two previously unknown Sunni groups
claimed responsibility on Twitter for al-Laqis' assassination, but the
claims could not be verified.
Al-Laqis, 53, was killed as he returned home from
work, Hezbollah said. "The brother martyr Hassan al-Laqis spent his
youth and dedicated all his life in this honorable resistance since its
inception up until the last moments of his life," a statement from the
group said.
An official close to the highly secretive group
said al-Laqis held some of Hezbollah's most sensitive portfolios and was
very close to Nasrallah and his inner circle, often acting as a link
with officials in Tehran.
"He was one of the brains behind much of the
group's operations," the official said. Hezbollah distributed a photo of
al-Laqis and said Israel had tried to kill him several times. The image
showed a man wearing beige-and-khaki military clothes, with neatly cut
black hair and a graying close-cropped beard.
There were conflicting reports on whether he was
involved in the Syria war, where the group's fighters have helped
Assad's troops gain the upper hand in key areas near the border with
Lebanon. Marie Harf, deputy spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department,
said the U.S. has seen reports of the killing and was looking to all
parties "to cooperate with a full investigation."
"We've been very concerned by recurring instances
of sectarian and political violence in Lebanon, and we have talked about
the negative impact that Syria has had in Lebanon and Iraq," she said.
Al-Laqis was shot with a pistol equipped with a silencer at close range
after he parked in his apartment building in the Hadath neighborhood
southwest of Beirut, according to a Lebanese security official and the
official close to Hezbollah. Several assailants appear to have been
involved, they said.
Muddy footprints led from the olive grove to the
parking garage. Yellow police tape blocked off the area, and Hezbollah
investigators were at the scene. He was struck by five bullets in the
head and neck, the Lebanese official said. The gunmen fled, and al-Laqis
was taken to a nearby hospital but died of his wounds, the officials
said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not
authorized to talk to the media.
"I was trying to sleep, and I heard ... a bullet
being fired and a dog barking," said Abdullah, a resident who asked to
be identified only by his first name for security reasons. "I did not
bother myself, but later I heard people screaming. ... Then our
neighbors told us that one of the neighbors was assassinated," Abdullah
said.
Another resident, who spoke on condition of
anonymity for fear of his safety, said none of the neighbors were aware
that al-Laqis was a security man and that he went about his business
like everyone else.
Al-Laqis did not have bodyguards with him,
suggesting he did not want to draw attention to himself. The
assassination marked a rare breach of the Shiite militant group's
security — the fourth successful penetration of a Hezbollah enclave in
recent months.
It also underscored how the militia has found
itself engaged on multiple fronts: Shoring up Assad's rule in Syria
while also keeping up the fight against Israel. Some of Hezbollah's most
loyal supporters in the Shiite community have been reluctant to embrace
its fight in Syria.
That involvement has raised tensions in Lebanon's
Sunni and Shiite communities as each side lines up in support of their
brethren in the Syrian civil war. That has fueled predictions that
Lebanon, still recovering from its 15-year civil war that ended in 1990,
is on the brink of descending into full-blown sectarian violence.
In Tripoli, Lebanon's second-largest city, there
have been bloody street battles between rival sides nearly every day,
with at least 12 people killed last week. Al-Laqis was buried later
Wednesday in his hometown of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon. A few thousand
people took part in pouring rain, and women wept as Hezbollah
pallbearers carried the coffin, wrapped in the group's yellow flag,
through the streets. Hezbollah fighters fired in the air in mourning.
"The Israeli enemy is naturally directly to blame,"
the Hezbollah statement said. "This enemy must shoulder complete
responsibility and repercussions for this heinous crime and its repeated
targeting of leaders and cadres of the resistance."
Israeli officials categorically denied involvement.
Still, Israel could view the fallout from Hezbollah's armed
intervention in Syria — and the long list of enemies it has created — as
cover to move against one of the group's senior figures and settle old
scores with Hezbollah and Iran.
Hezbollah has fought several wars against Israel.
Al-Laqis' son, Ali, died fighting Israel in the monthlong 2006 war.
Israel's Mossad intelligence service has been suspected of assassinating
Hezbollah commanders for more than two decades.
In 1992, Israeli helicopter gunships ambushed the
motorcade of Hezbollah leader Sheik Abbas Musawi, killing him, his wife
and 5-year-old son, and four bodyguards. Eight years earlier, Hezbollah
leader Sheik Ragheb Harb was shot and killed in south Lebanon.
One of the biggest blows for the group came in 2008
when top military commander Imad Mughniyeh was killed by a bomb that
ripped through his car in Damascus. Hezbollah and its primary patron,
Iran, blamed Israel's Mossad for the killing.
Associated Press writer Tia Goldenberg in Jerusalem and Diaa Hadid in Beirut contributed to this report.
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