WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States said Wednesday the "world is a better place" without a top commander of the Lebanese Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah, who was assassinated in a car bombing in Damascus.
Analysts and others, however, warned of the high likelihood of retaliation against Israel, which Hezbollah immediately blamed for the killing of Imad Mughnieh, a central figure in terrorist attacks by Shiite extremists since the 1980s.
US intelligence threat assessments have routinely underscored that Hezbollah is the only group besides al-Qaeda with the reach and capability to strike targets in the United States.
But the United States grimly welcomed the death of a man that is believed to have been behind kidnappings of westerners, assassinations of US officials and devastating bombings of US military installations in the region.
"The world is a better place without this man in it," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.
"He was a cold-blooded killer, a mass murderer and terrorist responsible for countless innocent lives lost."
"One way or another he was brought to justice," McCormack said.
A US intelligence official said, "This is someone who has caused the United States considerable pain over probably a quarter of a century. This should indicate that terrorists can run but they can't hide."
Mughnieh died in a car bombing in a residential neighbourhood of the Syrian capital late on Tuesday, Hezbollah officials said.
Western intelligence services suspected him of working directly for Iranian intelligence and he was on State Department and FBI most wanted lists.
"Imad Mughnieh is one of the most accomplished terrorist of our time," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and expert on Mideast terrorism at the Brookings Institution.
He said Mughnieh was a founding architect of Hezbollah and chief of its terrorist wing since the militias birth in the mid-1980s during the Lebanese war with Iranian backing.
According to Riedel, Mughnieh was responsible for hostage-takings of westerners in Lebanon in the 1980s and the hijacking of a TWA aircraft in 1980 in which a US navy diver was killed.
After the TWA hijacking, the United States offered a reward of up to five million dollars for information leading to Mughnieh's arrest.
"Prior to September 11 he was probably the most wanted on the (US) most wanted list," Riedel said.
He was linked to the murder of kidnapped CIA station chief William Buckley in Beirut in 1985; and the killing of Marine Colonel Rich Higgins who was kidnapped, tortured and killed in 1988.
He was wanted for the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, which killed 29 people, and the 1994 bombing of a Jewish Cultral Center in the same city that killed 86 people.
And Hezbollah was linked to the 1996 truck bombing of a US residential complex called Khobar Towers near Dahran, Saudi Arabia that killed 19 US servicemembers and a Saudi.
"We are pretty certain that the bombmaker who built the bomb that was used against the US Air Force barracks at Khobar Towers was a member of Hezbollah, in which case Mughnieh would have been very much involved," Riedel said.
Riedel said the United States mounted an operation to snatch Mughnieh in the 1990s after receiving information that a flight he was on would make a transit in Jeddah. But they were unable to move quickly enough.
"His death will be a signficant blow both for Hezbollah and the Iranian intelligence service with whom he worked very, very closely," he said.
"He was the principal liaison between the Iranian intelligence service and Hezbollah, very much involved in the trafficking of arms from Iran to Hezbollah, since the summer war in 2006 between Israel and Lebanon.
"He's probably on the most wanted list of the Mossad; he had to have been not just in the top ten, but probably in the top five."
The car-bombing that killed Mughnieh fit the style of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, according to Riedel.
"They have a history of carrying out operations in downtown Damascus. They have been tracing this man for years and years," he said.
But he caustioned "it is clear from the reaction of Hezbollah, and the Iranians and the Syrians today, but especially from Hezbollah, that there will be very significant retaliation against an Israeli target for this.
"It may not be immediate, it may take them a while to get something organized. But the history of this struggle between Israel and Hezbollah is that Hezbollah will strike back in a major way."
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