Key Hizbullah Commander Killed in Syria's Aleppo

A senior Hizbullah military commander has been killed in battles in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo, media reports said on Friday.

Ali Fayyad, aka “Alaa of Bosnia”, has been killed in the ongoing clashes with Syrian rebels on the Athrayya-Khanasser road in rural Aleppo, the reports said.

Fayyad was known to have “planned, overseen and led” a key part of the siege that is imposed on the rebels in Damascus' Eastern Ghouta region, according to the reports.

He also played a key role in the capture of the strategic Syrian town of Shebaa that lies on the road to the Damascus international airport.

“Fayyad also led a military operation to besiege the Syrian rebel groups and isolate them in the south of the Syrian capital after having pushed them away from the area of the Sayyida Zeinab (Shiite) shrine,” the reports said.

His military tactics also played an important role in “halting the Syrian rebels' advance towards the Syrian coast.”

Hizbullah has deployed at least 6,000 militants to fight alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces against Islamist-led rebels and jihadists and around 1,000 Hizbullah members have been killed in Syria since the start of the conflict.

The party argues that its intervention, which is controversial in Lebanon, was necessary to protect the country from extremist groups and to prevent the fall of Syria into the hands of hostile forces.

Y.R.