A Lebanese security source confirmed Monday that the eldest son of Ahmed Jibril, Secretary General of the PFPL-General Command, was the victim of the car explosion, which took place in Beirut.
Member of the PFLP-General Command politburo, Jordan Region, Sami al Sayyed, told Albawaba.com in a telephone call that the eldest son of Ahmed Jibril, born in 1961, was targeted in the blast.
Sayyed held Israel responsible for “assassinating a prominent military leader of the PFLP.”
“Jihad who was supervising the military wing of the front and responsible for contacting its organization inside the Palestinian territories constituted a valuable target for the Israeli Mossad,” said Sayyed, adding that Jihad was in Lebanon to “follow up the front’s military units there.”
The PFLP-General Command leader said, “the assassination operation is considered a dual Israeli blow against the secretary general of the PFLP-General Command and a military leader.”
For his part, an aide to Israel's Defense Minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, denied "any connection" to the car-bomb attack in Beirut.
"Israel had no connection to [the car bomb]," Ben-Eliezer's aide, Yarden Vatikay, said, adding that the defence minister had also denied any link. "As usual, they blame Israel."
An unkown group, the Lebanese Nationalists Movement, has taken responsiblity for the assassination. In a statement sent to the press, the group claimed that it had killed Jibril because of the fact that PFLP-GC was operating on Lebanese ground at the behest of Syria.
Jihad Jibril was commander of military operations in Lebanon and a member of the PFLP-GC's executive committee leadership. He had taken military courses in Libya and had the rank of a lieutenant colonel. In addition to his military activities, he was in Lebanon studying law at a Beirut university. He is survived by his wife and two sons, 10-year-old Ahmed and 6-year-old Ali.
Jibril's Damascus office also confirmed that the dead man, who was part of the PFLP-GC's military leadership, was his son. Jibril looked somber as he accepted condolences at his Damascus office shortly after receiving the news, but did not comment. An aide of him immediately blamed Israel. When asked who was responsible for the assassination, Talal Naji, an aide to Ahmed Jibril, said only: "Israel alone."
PFLP-GC sources said Jihad Jibril's body would be transported to Damascus for a funeral Tuesday.
There were no other reports of injuries. Lebanese security forces rushed to seal off the site to all but medical teams arriving in ambulances. The explosion rocked the busy shopping area of Corniche Mazraa. It had been placed under the driver's seat of the Peugeot sedan, police told AP.
The force of the blast left the front of the car twisted and doused with blood, witnesses said, and scattered body parts around the car. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
