Hezbollah's Moughniyah killed in Syria blast

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hezbollah military commander ImadMoughniyah was killed by a car bomb in Damascus on Tuesday, theLebanese group said, announcing the death of the man believedto be behind Western hostage taking in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, accusedIsrael of killing Moughniyah, thought to be in his late 40s.

"After a life full of jihad, sacrifices and accomplishments... Haj Imad Moughniyah ... died a martyr at the hands of theIsraeli Zionists," said Hezbollah, which fought a 34-day war in2006 with the Jewish state.

Islamic Jihad, a shadowy pro-Iranian group widely believedlinked to Hezbollah, kidnapped several Western hostages,including Americans, in Beirut in the mid 1980s.

The group, at the time thought to be commanded byMoughniyah, killed a few of its captives and exchanged othersfor U.S. weapons to Iran in what was later known as theIran-Contra scandal.

Among the victims of Islamic Jihad was the CIA's stationchief.

The group was also linked to suicide bomb attacks againstthe U.S. embassy and Marine headquarters in Lebanon in the1980s.

Moughniyah's brother was killed in a similar attack inBeirut in 1994. Reports at the time suggested Imad was the realtarget. Moughniyah had spent much of the 1990s in Iran makingonly few visits to Beirut.

Some reports suggested he was in charge of Hezbollah'soperations abroad and link him to attacks on Israeli targets inLatin America in the 1990s.

(Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)