Hezbollah Blames Israel for Killings of Nuclear Scientist Near Damascus

Five nuclear scientists were ambushed outside Damascus on Sunday and were killed by machine-gun fire while riding in a commuter van. The Lebanese Hezbollah today blamed Israel for their death. At least one of the assassinated scientists was an Iranian citizen, the Syrian state TV reported today.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights described the dead as “five nuclear engineers” working at a scientific research center near the neighborhood of Barzeh, northern Damascus. The research facility in Bazreh came under rocket-propelled grenade attack in July 2013, killing at least six scientists and wounding 19, the state TV reported at the time.

Syrian officials released no details on the nationality of the other four men killed, but said the assassinated Iranian citizen was a “scientific consultant.”

“We can confirm that five scientific experts were martyred by terrorists as part of an ongoing plots of the Zionist entity (Israel),” a Hezbollah security commander said in Beirut. “We have long determined that the Zionist entity works closely with a number of the so-called rebel groups for anti-Hezbollah and anti-Syrian regime operations.”