Syrian FM: Car bomb that killed Mughniyeh is under investigation

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Investigations are under way into who was behind the car bomb that killed Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said Thursday, adding that he expected the perpetrators to be found soon. "Syrian security forces are continuing investigations into this terrorist crime and we hope you will hear results soon," he said at a joint press conference with his Iranian counterpart Manouchehr Mottaki. "We as a state will show with full proof the party involved in this crime and who stands behind them." Moallem described the killing of Mughniyeh, who has been implicated in a string of attacks against Americans, Israelis and Jews, among others, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as a blow to peace. He said those who killed Mughniyeh "assassinated any attempt to revive the peace process," hinting for the first time that Israel might be involved. For his part, Mottaki said that the matter of the assassination came up in his talks with Syrian president Bashar Assad and he said Israel was retaliating for its "losses" in the Second Lebanon War and "imagined it could exact a heavy price by assassinating one leader of the Lebanese resistance."