Omran Karim, the first Saudi national killed in Lebanon, in a photo published on his Facebook account on January 15, 2023.
A Saudi national was killed over the weekend in an Israeli strike in Lebanon, according to information from our correspondent, Mountasser Abdallah. Omran Karim, a dentist from Qatif on Saudi Arabia's eastern coast, is the first Saudi citizen killed in Lebanon since the outbreak of hostilities between Hezbollah and the Israeli army on Oct.8, 2023.
A family man and the son of the presumed head of the Saudi Hezbollah’s military wing, who has been imprisoned since 2015, what do we know about this man?
Though details of the strike that killed him were not immediately available, several people paid tribute to him on Facebook, announcing that he had died while fighting alongside Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
The victim, a Shiite, had a dental practice in Bir al-Abed, a southern suburb of Beirut, according to the Lebanese Dental Association's website. He also managed a travel agency specializing in trips to Iran and had two daughters.
Tributes to Nasrallah and Kaouk
On his Facebook account, the dentist had paid tribute, in late September, to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. On Oct. 2, he posted a photo with Hussein Kaouk, a member of Hezbollah's Executive Council, who was killed in a strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut on Sept. 28. He mentioned meeting Hussein Kaouk "in late 2016" when he arrived in Lebanon. In a post, he wrote that he mourned Nabil Kaouk and Hassan Nasrallah, whom he described as "like fathers" to him. This message, in which he said he wept, was accompanied by a photo of him paying his respects at Sheikh Kaouk’s resting place.
He also wrote several posts to honor Hezbollah fighters on the southern front.
Son of the Leader of Saudi Hezbollah
Omran Karim was the son of Ahmad Ibrahim al-Moughassil, the leader of Saudi Hezbollah or "Hezbollah of the Hijaz." Nicknamed "Abu Omran" (father of Omran), this man was sought for years by the United States and Saudi Arabia for terrorism before being arrested in Beirut in 2015.Omran Karim expressed his admiration for his father on Facebook several times.
In August 2022, he posted a photo of Ahmad Ibrahim al-Moughassil to mark the seventh anniversary of his imprisonment.
In 2016, he also praised his mother, married to a man "wanted by the House of Saud" and "by the CIA and Interpol," who was then "on death row."
U.S. authorities had offered a five-million-dollar reward for information on Ahmad Ibrahim al-Moughassil, the "presumed head of the Saudi Hezbollah’s military wing" wanted for his role in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia. This attack killed 19 U.S. servicemen housed in the residential complex as well as a Saudi national. In 2001, al-Moughassil was designated a terrorist by the U.S. State Department and placed on the FBI’s "Most Wanted Terrorists" list. He was arrested in Beirut in August 2015 by Saudi intelligence, according to CNN, and extradited to Saudi Arabia.
