By Laila Bassam and Nadim Ladki
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hezbollah commander Imad Moughniyah waskilled by a car bomb in Damascus on Tuesday, the Lebanese groupsaid, announcing the death of the man believed to be behindWestern hostage taking in Lebanon in the 1980s.
Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, accusedIsrael of killing Moughniyah, 46. The Israeli governmentdeclined to comment.
Moughniyah had long been on a list of foreigners Israelwanted to kill or capture and had also been among the FBI'smost wanted.
"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 was the CIA's station chief.
The group was also linked to suicide bomb attacks againstthe U.S. embassy and Marine headquarters in Lebanon that killedsome 300 Americans in the 1980s.
Israel accuses Moughniyah of masterminding the 1994 bombingof a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires that killed 87 people and ofinvolvement in a 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in theArgentinian capital that killed 28.
A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declinedto comment. "We have released no statement on this matter,"Mark Regev said.
Moughniyah's brother was killed in a car bomb in Beirut in1994. Reports at the time suggested Imad had been the target.Moughniyah had spent much of the 1990s in Iran making, only fewvisits to Beirut.
He had been on the FBI's list most wanted "terrorist" listfor his role in planning and participating in the June 14,1985, hijacking of a commercial U.S. TWA airliner.
The United States has offered a reward of up to $5 millionfor information leading directly his arrest and conviction.
(Additional reporting by Adam Entous in Jerusalem; Writingby Tom Perry; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)
