Portrait of Salim Ayache. Photo published on social networks.
Arab media outlets, including al-Hadath and al-Arabiya, report that Salim Ayash, who was convicted in 2020 by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) for the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, may have been killed. The reports, based on unnamed sources, describe his death as an "assassination" but provide no further details.
Ayash, a senior Hezbollah figure, was reportedly killed in al-Qusayr, a Syrian town near the Lebanese border. This news comes two days after an airstrike, attributed to the Israeli army, struck a vehicle in the nearby Syrian border village of Hawoush al-Sayyid Ali, near al-Qusayr, on Friday.
Other sources claim that Ayash was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Sunday, targeting an apartment "belonging to Hezbollah members" in Sayyidah Zaynab neighborhood, south of Damascus. According to official Syrian media, the strike killed at least nine people, including women and children, and injured 14 others. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) claimed that a Hezbollah commander was killed in the strike.
Hezbollah has yet to issue an official statement to confirm these reports.
Convicted by the STL
Ayash, 60, was the only one — of four defendants — to be convicted in absentia by the STL in August 2020 for his role as a “co-perpetrator” in the assassination of Hariri on Feb. 14, 2005. Hariri was killed in downtown Beirut by a suicide bomber who drove a van packed with explosives, killing 22 people and injuring 226. At the time, Hariri was seeking another term as Lebanon’s prime minister.
The assassination, initially blamed on four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals, sparked historic protests and led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon after nearly 30 years.
A founding Hezbollah member from southern Lebanon, Ayash was accused of leading the team that carried out the attack, alongside Mustafa Badreddine, Hezbollah’s former military commander in Syria, who was believed to have orchestrated the operation. Badreddine, who was reported dead in 2016, was never tried.
Ayash also faced charges of "attempted intentional homicide" for the 226 people injured in the attack. In 2019, the STL further charged him with "terrorism" and murder in connection with three deadly attacks on Lebanese politicians in 2004 and 2005.