Former Lebanese PM Rafic Hariri’s 'Hezbollah assassin' reportedly killed in Israeli strike on Syria

A Hezbollah leader previously convicted in absentia for the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri may have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on Syria.

Lebanese newspaper L’Orient Le Jour said that there were reports from several sources saying that Salim Ayyash, convicted in 2020 by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) of Hariri’s assassination, had been killed by Israel.

Some sources said that Ayyash, a senior member of Hezbollah, had been killed in the town of Qusair in Syria’s Homs province, near the border with Lebanon.

Others said that he was killed in an Israeli strike on an apartment building in the town of Sayyidah Zeynab south of Damascus on Sunday. At least nine people were killed in that airstrike including women and children, while 14 were injured.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that a Hezbollah commander was among the victims.

Sixty-year-old Ayyash stood trial in absentia at the STL along with three other suspects for Hariri’s murder. He was the only suspect convicted with the court in December 2020 giving him five life terms.

Hariri, who served as Lebanese prime minister from 1992-1998 and 2000-2004 was assassinated in a suicide bombing in downtown Beirut in February 2005, which killed 22 other people.

While initially an ally of Syria, Hariri later aligned with anti-Syrian Lebanese opposition groups with the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad and Hezbollah widely suspected of being behind his killing.

However, the STL found that Ayyash had acted alone and Hezbollah’s senior leadership were not involved in the assassination.