(Damascus) The armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad announced the death of one of its cadres on Sunday near his home in the suburbs of Damascus, during an operation by Israeli “agents”, according to a press release .
“The Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine and its armed wing, the al-Quds Brigades…mourn Ali Ramzi al-Aswad, [nicknamed] Abu Abd al-Rahman, 31”, a Palestinian refugee from a camp in Syria having joined the ranks of the al-Quds Brigades very early on, the statement said.
He was killed on Sunday morning by “agents of the Zionist enemy”, according to the same source, which denounced a “cowardly crime”.
“The assassination was carried out by direct fire near his house” in the Qudsiya neighborhood on the outskirts of Damascus, said a Palestinian Islamic Jihad official, who requested anonymity.
He will be buried Monday in the cemetery of the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, near Damascus, added this interlocutor.
In November 2019, two people, including the son of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader, Akram al-Ajouri, were killed in an Israeli bomb attack in Damascus, according to official Syrian media and the Palestinian radical organization, including many leaders are based in Damascus.
Last month, 15 people were killed in an Israeli strike on the Syrian capital that targeted a neighborhood housing the headquarters of several security services, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) said. This is the deadliest Israeli strike on Damascus since the start of the civil war in Syria in 2011, said this NGO.
Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes on its neighbor since 2011, primarily targeting positions of the Syrian army, Iranian forces and Hezbollah.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Sunday in the Council of Ministers that “dozens of terrorists” had been killed by Israel in the past month. “We will reach the terrorists and the architects of terrorism wherever they are,” he added, without referring to the death of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad cadre.
