‘Israel’ Assassinates Senior Islamic Jihad Leader in Damascus

By Staff, Agencies

The ‘Israeli’ occupation regime assassinated in the morning of 19 March, Ali Ramzi al-Aswad, a senior leader and engineer in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement’s military wing, al-Quds Brigade, near the Syrian capital Damascus.

“The Al-Quds Brigade mourns the martyred commander and engineer Ali Al-Aswad, who was assassinated by the collaborators of the Zionist enemy in the countryside of Damascus,” the PIJ said in a statement.

Initially, unofficial Syrian sources had reported that Aswad, 31-years-old, also known as Abu Abdel Rahman, was assassinated early in the morning of Sunday in the Qudsaya suburbs, west of Damascus.

According to the PIJ statement, Aswad was a Palestinian refugee whose family was displaced from the city of Haifa after the 1948 Nakba. He grew up in the Palestinian refugee camps in Syria before joining the ranks of the PIJ movement in Syria.

“An ‘Israeli’ Mossad squad consisting of four members shot and killed the engineer commander, Ali Ramzi al-Aswad,” ‘Israeli’ journalist Yoni Ben Menachem was quoted to have told Hebrew media.

“The security establishment has begun to work,” Menachem added.

“Investigations into the assassination of commander Ali Al-Aswad in the Damascus countryside are underway and more than one party is participating in it … The decision to retaliate will be taken based on the results of the investigations,” Palestinian sources told Al-Mayadeen.

This was the first known ‘Israeli’ operation to be carried out against the PIJ’s Syria branch since 2019, when a leader in the group, Akram al-Ajouri, was unsuccessfully targeted in an airstrike.

The killing comes after a string of ‘Israeli’ assassinations in the occupied West Bank. Over the past ten days, the Zionist military and special forces units have carried out targeted killings of several leaders and members of a number of resistance factions, including Hamas, the PIJ, and other West Bank-based factions affiliated with the PIJ.

It also comes one day after a meeting was held between the Secretary-General of the PIJ, Ziad al-Nakhala and Hezbollah Secretary General His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in the Lebanese capital Beirut.