Hezbollah military leader assassinated

Hezbollah fighters carry the coffin of Hassane Laqees, a senior commander for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, who was gunned down outside his home Wednesday, during his funeral procession at his hometown of Baalbek city, east Lebanon.

Hezbollah fighters carry the coffin of Hassane Laqees, a senior commander for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, who was gunned down outside his home Wednesday, during his funeral procession at his hometown of Baalbek city, east Lebanon.

Thursday, December 5, 2013

BEIRUT - A military leader of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah movement was assassinated in front of his home south of Beirut, Hezbollah said in a statement Wednesday.

The killing, which came shortly after Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, accused Saudi Arabia of responsibility for last month’s deadly bombing at the Iranian Embassy in Beirut, fueled fears of an escalation of tit-for-tat violence inside Lebanon related to the conflict in neighboring Syria.

But questions continued to swirl about how, why and by whom the military leader, Hassane Laqees, was targeted. Lebanese news reports said that he was gunned down in a parking lot near an apartment where he stayed or worked, which is near but not inside the security zone that Hezbollah maintains around its headquarters in southern Beirut.

Hezbollah did not say how he was killed but accused “the Israeli enemy” of targeting him and said Israel would have to “bear all the responsibility and ramifications of this vile crime.” Israeli officials denied involvement.

At the same time, memorial images circulated on social media showing Laqees against a backdrop of the Sayida Zeinab shrine near Damascus, Syria, framing his death as part of the conflict there.

Hezbollah, a Shiite organization and close ally of Iran and of Syria’s government, has sent fighters to defend the shrine and to aid President Bashar Assad’s forces in other key battles, a decision that has enraged Hezbollah’s Sunni rivals, who back the Syrian rebels.

Two previously unknown groups whose names suggested that they consisted of Sunni militants claimed responsibility for the killing, although it was unclear whether either group existed beyond online statements. One called itself Free Sunnis of Baalbek, a town where Hezbollah support is strong. The other, Ansar al-Sunnah, said in an online statement that Laqees bore direct responsibility for the“massacre” in Qusair, a strategic border town that Hezbollah helped Syrian forces capture.

Hezbollah, in keeping with the deep secrecy surrounding its military structure and operations, did not specify what role Laqees played in the organization or how senior he was.

But at Laqees’ funeral in Baalbek, in Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, mourners gathered under umbrellas to watch a procession that placed Laqees’ portrait alongside those of the group’s top leaders, a level of ceremony that analysts said spoke to his importance.

Hezbollah has blamed previous attacks on Israel rather than pointing the finger at Sunni militants in what analysts view as a signal that the group, which is also Lebanon’s strongest political party, does not want to escalate sectarian tensions inside Lebanon.

POPE: FREE 12 NUNS

Also Wednesday, Pope Francis called for prayers for 12 Orthodox nuns reportedly taken by force from their convent in Syria by rebels. Religious officials in the region have said the women were abducted, but a Syrian opposition activist said they were merely removed for their own safety.

The 12 nuns join two bishops and a priest who are already believed to be held by hard-line rebels.

Speaking to a crowd gathered for the pontiff’s general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Francis invited “everyone to pray for the sisters of the Greek Orthodox monastery of Santa Takla in Maaloula, Syria, who were taken by force by armed men two days ago.”

In other news, the European Union’s anti-terrorism chief will tell EU interior ministers today about the “major security threat” posed by the increase of European fighters in Syria - and their eventual return to the EU.

A note for the meeting from the office of EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Gilles de Kerchove stresses that the number of fighters traveling back and forth from Syria is increasing.

The 11 western European countries with the biggest contingents in Syria are estimated to have some 1,200-1,700 people among rebel forces, according to government and analyst figures compiled by The Associated Press. That compares with estimates of 600-800 from those countries in late spring.

In the United States, concerned by the attempts of al-Qaida and its global affiliates to attract more Americans and other Westerners to conflicts including the war in Syria, the State Department is stepping up its online efforts to combat violent extremists’ recruiting of English speakers.

For the past three years, a small band of online analysts and bloggers in a tiny State Department office has focused its efforts on trying to understand what inspires its target audience - men 18 to 30 years old, mostly in the Middle East - to violent extremism, and on finding ways to steer them away from that. The analysts speak Arabic, Urdu, Somali and Punjabi.

In the pilot program that began Wednesday, the same analysts will for the first time also post messages on English-language websites that jihadists use to recruit, raise money and promote their cause. For now, the analysts will post only images and messages, and not engage extremists in online conversations.

Information for this article was contributed by Anne Barnard, Ben Hubbard, Eric Schmitt and Jodi Rudoren of The New York Times; and by Albert Aji, Nicole Winfield, Diaa Hadid, Daniela Petroff, Raf Casert and Cassandra Vinograd of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 2 on 12/05/2013