IDF killed Syria-based Hezbollah officer behind 2007 massacre of US troops — report
Ali Mussa Daqduq helped plan Iran-backed attack that killed 5 at American-Iraqi base, was tasked by terror group with forming observation posts against Israel on Syrian soil
A recent IDF airstrike in Syria killed a senior Hezbollah commander who helped plan an Iranian-led attack that killed five US soldiers in Iraq in 2007, NBC News reported Friday, citing a senior US defense official.
It was unclear precisely when or where the strike that killed Ali Mussa Daqduq was carried out, the official was cited as saying.
Israel, which rarely acknowledged operations in Syria, has recently stepped up airstrikes on Hezbollah there, amid the 2-month-old ground operation against the terror group in Lebanon.
Daqduq was detained by US forces soon after the 2007 attack, in which Iran-backed gunmen disguised as an American security team infiltrated the joint American-Iraqi military base in Karbala, fired a grenade that killed a US soldier, and captured four others, whom they later shot dead.
According to NBC, Daqduq — who initially pretended to be deaf-mute — told interrogators that the attack had resulted from the direct support and training of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force.
The US extradited Daqduq to Iraq, which assured Washington he would be prosecuted. NBC said he was the last prisoner the US handed over to Iraq before withdrawing from the country in December 2011 after eight years of war there. Iraq, in turn, acquitted Daqduq and released him in late 2012, to Washington’s outrage.
The defense official cited by NBC said that soon after his release, Daqduq was back to leading Hezbollah operations.
According to the US Treasury Department, Daqduq had served “as commander of a Hezbollah special forces unit and chief of a protective detail for Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah,” the longtime terror chief whom Israel killed in an airstrike in Beirut in late September.
Israel, which rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria, is believed to have carried out hundreds of strikes since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011, mainly targeting weapons shipments from Iran to Hezbollah and Iran-backed fighters including Hezbollah. More than 90 pro-Iran fighters are said to have been killed in an alleged Israeli airstrike on Palmyra on Wednesday.
In 2018, the IDF said Daqduq, a member of Hezbollah since 1983, had been tasked by the Iran-backed terror group with establishing observation posts against Israel on Syrian soil.
In 2019, Israel said it had uncovered a Hezbollah cell, led by Daqduq, operating in a border town in the Syrian Golan Heights. The Shiite terror group’s cell was said to comprise mostly Syrian mercenaries, including some Druze who had joined for “financial reasons.”
The military at the time released photographs of the false identification cards Daqduq had used in his movements throughout Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.
Daqduq’s son, Hassan Ali Daqduq, was reportedly killed on December 8, 2023, in an Israeli drone strike in Syria. At the time, Israel didn’t acknowledge the strike, but Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the IDF spokesman, published footage of it in February as rare evidence that “We will continue to act wherever Hezbollah is present.”
Hagari in his press conference also airs footage of a strike on a Hezbollah cell in southern Syria. pic.twitter.com/gxKBU8gTuB
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) February 3, 2024
Hezbollah-led forces have attacked northern Israel from Lebanon, and to a smaller extent from Syria, on a near-daily basis since October 8, 2023 — a day after thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.
Fearing Hezbollah would invade the north, Israel evacuated towns along the Lebanese border. Some 60,000 northerners remain displaced amid relentless rocket fire by Hezbollah, which says its attacks are in support of Gaza.
Hezbollah has also expanded its attacks to target cities in central and northern Israel with rockets, in addition to the attacks on the border, though in recent days the IDF has seen a decrease in the number of attacks.
The attacks on northern Israel since October 2023 have resulted in the deaths of 44 civilians. In addition, 71 IDF soldiers and reservists have died in cross-border skirmishes and in the ensuing ground operation launched in southern Lebanon in late September. Two soldiers have been killed in a drone attack from Iraq, and there have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.
The IDF estimates that some 3,000 Hezbollah operatives have been killed in the conflict. Around 100 members of other terror groups, along with hundreds of civilians, have also been reported killed in Lebanon.
