By Laila Bassam and Nadim Ladki
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hezbollah leader Imad Moughniyah, on theUnited States' most wanted list for attacks on Israeli andWestern targets, was killed by a bomb in Damascus, the Lebanesegroup said on Wednesday.
Hezbollah swiftly accused Israel of assassinatingMoughniyah, who was head of the Hezbollah security networkduring Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war. In Gaza, Hamas Islamistscalled for the Arab world to unite against Israel.
Israel denied any involvement.
Moughniyah, 45, was killed late on Tuesday by a bombplanted in his car. He had long been on a list of foreignersIsrael wanted to kill or apprehend and the United States hadoffered a reward for his capture.
He was implicated in the 1983 bombings of the U.S. embassyand U.S. Marine and French peacekeeping barracks in Beirut,which killed over 350 people, as well as the 1992 bombing ofthe Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and the kidnapping ofWesterners in Lebanon in the 1980s.
The United States indicted him for his role in planning andparticipating in the June 14, 1985, hijacking of a U.S. TWAairliner and the killing of an American passenger.
Hezbollah, a group backed by Syria and Iran, announced theassassination and called followers to his funeral on Thursday.
"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.
The war was triggered by a Hezbollah cross-border raid inwhich two Israeli soldiers were captured. According to Israeliintelligence assessments, Moughniyah was involved inmasterminding the operation.
Israel also accuses Moughniyah of planning 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.
"He was not only being targeted by Israel, but also by theAmericans and many other parties," said former Mossad headDanny Yatom on Israel Radio. "He was one of the terrorists withthe most amount of intelligence agencies and states chasinghim."
Moughniyah had been a very tough target to track, he said,describing his death as a severe blow to Hezbollah.
"He behaved with extreme caution for many years. It wasimpossible even to obtain his picture. He never appeared orspoke before the media.
"His identity was hidden. His steps were hidden. He behavedwith extreme caution, and that was the reason it was difficultto get to him for so many years."
Moughniyah was thought to be the commander of IslamicJihad, a shadowy pro-Iranian group which emerged in Lebanon inthe early 1980s and was believed linked to Hezbollah.
Islamic Jihad kidnapped several Western hostages, includingAmericans, in Beirut in the mid 1980s.
The group killed a few of its captives and exchanged othersfor U.S. weapons to Iran in what was later known as theIran-Contra scandal. Among those killed was the CIA's stationchief.
"Israel rejects the attempts of terror elements toattribute to Israel any involvement in this incident," PrimeMinister Ehud Olmert's office said in a statement.
Israel rarely confirms or denies its involvement inassassinations abroad. In 1992, its helicopters killed SayyedAbbas Moussawi, who preceeded Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah asHezbollah's leader.
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.
(Additional reporting by Adam Entous and Ari Rabinovitch inJerusalem; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)
