BEIRUT (AFP) – A man suspected of involvement in an attack last month on a Shiite shrine in Syria died following a Hezbollah pursuit late on Friday south of the Lebanese capital, the Iran backed group said.
“Wissam Dalla, a Syrian in his early 20s, threw himself from the seventh floor of a building where he had been staying with relatives after learning his location had been discovered”, Hezbollah said in a statement sent to AFP.
Dalla was responsible for the explosion in the Sayyida Zeinab area south of the Syrian capital last month, the Shiite Muslim group added. AFP was unable to independently confirm the allegations against Dalla.
Lebanese security forces played no role in the incident, a security source told AFP on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media. Lebanon’s authorities did not immediately issue any statements.
On July 27, six people were killed and at least 20 others wounded when a bomb exploded south of Damascus near the Sayyida Zeinab mausoleum, Syria’s most visited Shiite pilgrimage site, authorities said.
Extremist group later claimed the blast, which came ahead of the annual commemoration of Ashura, a key event on the Shiite calendar.
Friday’s incident took place in Hay al-Sellom, an impoverished neighbourhood in Beirut’s outhern suburbs – a Hezbollah stronghold.
The group had pursued Dalla amid fears he could carry out another attack, the statement added, saying he was taken to hospital but died. Relevant bodies in Hezbollah were informed that he had entered Lebanon secretly, the statement said. Hezbollah is the only Lebanese faction that kept its weapons after the end of the 1975-1990 civil war. It is considered an extremist organisation by many Western governments.
Two days earlier, an explosion in a car in the same area wounded two civilians, official media had cited a security official as saying.
Hezbollah has been fighting on the side of President Bashar al-Assad in the country’s civil war that erupted in 2011.
Beirut’s southern suburbs saw a wave of bombings between 2013 and 2015 carried out by Sunni extremists in retaliation for the Shiite group’s intervention in the Syria conflict.
