Palestinian fundamentalist leader killed in Lebanon

Sat, 25 Dec 2010

Beirut - A senior official with the Palestinian extremist group Jund al-Sham has been killed in southern Lebanon, a Fatah commander confirmed on Saturday.

The circumstances of Ghandy al-Sahmarani's death are still being investigated. Palestinian sources said he was found with his hands tied with wires and a gunshot wound to the mouth.

Munir Makdah, the commander of the Fatah movement in the southern Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh, said that Sahmarani was likely killed in the Taamir region, an area outside the camp near the southern Lebanese port city of Sidon.

The sources said Sahmarani was forbidden from entering Ain al- Hilweh itself because he was wanted by security forces inside the camp, especially those affiliated with Fatah.

Clashes have broken out in the camp between Fatah and Jund al-Sham in the past. Sahmarani had escaped an assassination attempt in the camp in 2008.

Jund al-Sham, or Soldiers of the Levant, is a terrorist group believed to have first appeared in Afghanistan in 1999. It was established by Syrian, Palestinian and Lebanese nationals with links to al-Qaeda leader Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.

Zarqawi, believed to be the mastermind behind hundreds of bombings, kidnappings and beheadings in Iraq, was killed north of Baghdad in June 2006 by a United States airstrike.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/359687,fundamentalist-leader-killed-lebanon.html.