By Tom Perry and Laila Bassam
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Senior Hezbollah commander ImadMoughniyah, on the United States' most wanted list for attackson Israeli and Western targets, has been killed by a bombattack in Damascus, the Lebanese group said on Wednesday.
Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, accusedIsrael of assassinating Moughniyah by planting a bomb in hiscar. Tehran blamed Israel and condemned the attack as an act of"state terrorism". Washington welcomed his death.
Israel denied any involvement in the killing, seen as amajor blow to a group whose last confrontation with the Jewishstate was the 34-day war of 2006.
Moughniyah, 45, was killed late on Tuesday. He had longbeen on a list of foreigners Israel wanted to kill or captureand had been top of Washington's wanted list before al Qaeda'sOsama bin Laden emerged as an enemy of the United States.
"His killing is a huge blow to Hezbollah," Magnus Ranstorp,terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defence College, said.
Moughniyah was implicated in the 1983 bombings of the U.S.embassy and U.S. Marine and French peacekeeping barracks inBeirut, which killed over 350 people, as well as the 1992bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and thekidnapping of Westerners 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.
"The world is a better place without this man in it. He wasa cold-blooded killer, a mass-murderer and a terroristresponsible for countless innocent lives lost," StateDepartment Spokesman Sean McCormack said.
"One way or another he was brought to justice," he said.
Hezbollah, a strong political and military force inLebanon, 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," Hezbollah said.
Moughniyah's coffin, draped in a Hezbollah flag and flankedby four men in military uniform, was laid in a hall where hisfamily and leaders of the Shi'ite group received condolences.
The 2006 war with Israel was triggered by a Hezbollahcross-border raid in which two Israeli soldiers were captured.
According to Israeli intelligence assessments, Moughniyahwas involved in planning the operation. He had also once beenhead of the security network of Hezbollah, a group whichemerged in the early 1980s during Lebanon's civil war.
TOUGH TARGET
Israel accuses Moughniyah of planning the 1994 bombing of aJewish centre in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and ofinvolvement in a 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in theArgentine 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."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."
The United States tried to detain Moughniyah several times,including a 1995 attempt to arrest him when the plane he wastravelling was due to stop in Saudi Arabia. Saudi officialsrefused to allow the plane to land, diplomats say.
Syrian authorities had no comment on Tuesday's attack whichtook place in an upmarket district that houses an Iranianschool, a police station and a Syrian intelligence office.
Witnesses at the scene told Reuters they saw securityofficers hauling the body away. Scores of police andintelligence officers rushed to the site. A police truck towedaway the destroyed car, a new model Mitsubishi Pajero.
Senior Hamas officials, including leader Khaled Meshaal,live in exile in Damascus.
"Israel rejects the attempts of terror elements toattribute to Israel any involvement in this incident," PrimeMinister Ehud Olmert's office said in a statement.
Moughniyah is thought to have been 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 some ofits captives and exchanged others for U.S. weapons to Iran inwhat was later known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Among thosekilled was the CIA's station chief.
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.
(Additional reporting by Nadim Ladki in Beirut, Adam Entousand Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem, Sue Pleming in Washington;Editing by Samia Nakhoul)
