Sniper kills Syrian general closely tied to Hezbollah

Beirut : Arab media reported on Sunday that a brigadier general thought to be the Syrian regime's liaison with Hezbollah in Lebanon has been assassinated.

The reports came almost six months after the killing in a Damascus car bomb of top Hezbollah military commander Emad Mughnieh, which the Shiite militant group blamed on Israel.

The Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily Al Hayat on Sunday quoted "informed sources" in London as saying that a senior Syrian officer had been found dead.

"The circumstances of the incident are not clear," the London-based paper said in its report, which said the sources suggested that the slain officer had been "in charge of sensitive files and closely linked to the Syrian top brass."

Right-hand man

Al Bawaba, an Arab news website, named the officer as Mohammad Sulaiman and said he was "Syria's liaison officer with Lebanon's Hezbollah movement."

It said he was killed by a sniper in the northwest Syrian town of Tartus and would be buried in his hometown of Driekesh yesterday.

However, Lebanon's Future News television station said his body was found at a hotel in Tartus.

The Lebanese anti-Syrian daily Al Mustaqbal quoted a Syrian news site as saying Sulaiman was the head of security at the presidential palace in Damascus and President Bashar Al Assad's "right-hand man."

The paper made no mention of Hezbollah in its report.

A Hezbollah official said in Lebanon that he did not know Mohammad Sulaiman and had not heard about any killing.

Israel has denied the Hezbollah charge that it was behind the assassination of Mughnieh in the Syrian capital on February 12.