Imad Fayez Mughniyeh, alias al-Hajj Radwan, was a Lebanese militant leader who was the founding member of Lebanon's Islamic Jihad Organization and number two in Hezbollah's leadership. Information about Mughniyeh is limited, but he is believed to have been Hezbollah's chief of staff and understood to have overseen Hezbollah's military, intelligence, and security apparatuses. He was one of the main founders of Hezbollah in the 1980s. He has been described as "a brilliant military tactician and very elusive". He was often referred to as an ‘untraceable ghost’.
Since 2004, a series of bombings and assassinations have struck Lebanon, most of them occurring in and around the capital, Beirut. This wave of bombings began with the assassination attempt on Marwan Hamadeh, then peaked with the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri on 14 February 2005, which touched off the Cedar Revolution and the withdrawal of Syrian troops. After the massive protests sparked by Hariri's killing, several more bombings hit Lebanon.
Terrorism in Syria has a long history dating from the state-terrorism deployed by the Ba'athist government since its seizure of power through a violent coup in 1963. The Ba'athist government have since deployed various types of state terrorism; such as ethnic cleansing, forced deportations, massacres, summary executions, mass rapes and other forms of violence to maintain its totalitarian rule in Syria. The most extensive use of state terrorism in the 20th century was, the state deployed extensive violence against civilians, such as the case of 2004 Qamishli massacre. When Arab Spring spread to Syria in 2011, the Ba'athist security apparatus launched a brutal crackdown against peaceful protestors calling for freedom and dignity, which killed thousands of civilians and deteriorated the crisis into a full-scale civil war. Taking advantage of the situation, transnational Jihadist groups like Islamic State and al-Nusra began to emerge in Syria as the war escalated, some of which emulated the deadly terrorist tactics of the Assad regime.
Fatah al-Islam is a Sunni Islamist militant group established in November 2006 in a Palestinian refugee camp, located in Lebanon. It has been described as a militant jihadist movement that draws inspiration from al-Qaeda. It became well known in 2007 after engaging in combat against the Lebanese Army in the Nahr al-Bared UNRWA Palestinian refugee camp. Following its defeat at Nahr el-Bared, the group relocated to the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp near Sidon in 2008. As of 2014, after the death or capture of many members, most of the surviving members of Fatah al-Islam are thought to have joined other groups in Lebanon and Syria including the Free Syrian Army, Al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The 2007 Lebanon conflict began when fighting broke out between Fatah al-Islam, an Islamist militant organization, and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) on May 20, 2007 in Nahr al-Bared, a UNRWA Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli.
The Sayyida Zaynab Mosque is a mosque located in Sayyidah Zaynab near the capital city of Damascus, Syria. Twelver Shia tradition considers the mosque to contain the grave of Zaynab bint Ali, the daughter of Ali and Fatima, and granddaughter of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
The Rif Dimashq clashes were a series of unrests and armed clashes in and around Damascus, the capital of Syria, from November 2011 until a stalemate in March 2012. The violence was part of the wider early insurgency phase of the Syrian civil war. Large pro-government and anti-government protests took place in the suburbs and center of Damascus, with the situation escalating when members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) started attacking military targets in November.
On 23 December 2011, two seemingly coordinated bombings occurred in the Syrian capital Damascus. The alleged suicide car bombs exploded outside Syrian military intelligence agency buildings, killing 44 people and injuring 166. According to Syrian state media, most of the dead were civilians. The attacks took place during the Syrian uprising. The Syrian government blamed Islamist militants, while the Syrian opposition accused the government of staging the attacks to justify its crackdown on the uprising.
The following is a timeline of the Syrian Civil War from January to April 2012, during which time the spate of protests that began in January 2011 lasted into another calendar year. An Arab League monitoring mission ended in failure as Syrian troops and anti-government militants continued to do battle across the country and the Syrian government prevented foreign observers from touring active battlefields, including besieged opposition strongholds. A United Nations-backed ceasefire brokered by special envoy Kofi Annan met a similar fate, with unarmed UN peacekeepers' movements tightly controlled by the government and fighting.
On 10 February 2012, two large bombs exploded at Syrian security forces buildings in Aleppo. According to the Syrian government and state media, the blasts were caused by two suicide car bombs. It reported that 28 people were killed and 235 wounded. The bombings took place during the Syrian civil war and the government blamed armed opposition groups.
Sayyidah Zaynab, commonly known as Sitt Zaynab, is a town in the Rif Dimashq Governorate of Syria, 10 km (6 mi) south of Damascus, the national capital. With a population of 136,427, it is the 10th most populous city in Syria and the most populous satellite city of Damascus. Administratively, the town is located in Markaz Rif Dimashq district and belongs to the nahiyah ("subdistrict") of Babbila. The municipality of Sayyidah Zaynab is still considered as a rural community by the governorate of Rif Dimashq. The city contains the Qabr Essit Palestinian refugee camp.
The 10 May 2012 Damascus bombings were carried out using a pair of car bombs allegedly detonated by suicide bombers outside a military intelligence complex in Damascus, Syria. Combined, the perpetrators detonated more than 1,000 kilograms (2,200 lb) of explosives, tearing the facade off of a 10-story building. With 55 people confirmed dead and almost 400 others injured, the attack was the deadliest bombing until then in the Syrian Civil War, though later outpaced by other events.
The 18 July 2012 Damascus bombing of the National Security headquarters in Rawda Square, Damascus, killed and injured a number of top military and security officials of the Syrian government. Among the dead were the Syrian Defense Minister and Deputy Defense Minister. The bombing occurred during the Syrian Civil War, and is considered to be one of the most notorious events to affect the conflict. Syrian state-controlled television reported that it was a suicide attack while the opposition claimed it was a remotely detonated bomb.
On 19 October 2012, Wissam al-Hassan, a brigadier general of the Lebanese Internal Security Forces (ISF) and the head of its intelligence-oriented information branch, died along with several others killed by a car bomb in the Achrafieh district of Beirut. The killing of a senior figure closely linked with the anti-Assad camp in Lebanon led to immediate speculation that Syria, or its allies, were behind the attack in Beirut. Al-Hassan had also led the investigation that implicated Syria and its ally Hezbollah in the killing of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri.
The Damascus offensive (2013) refers to a series of rebel operations that began in early February 2013 in and around the city of Damascus.
The 2013 Reyhanlı car bombings took place on 11 May 2013, when two car bombs exploded in the Turkish town of Reyhanlı, a town of 64,000 people, 5 km from the Syrian border and the busiest land border post with Syria, in Hatay Province, Turkey. At least 52 people were killed and 140 injured in the attack.
The 2013 Iranian embassy bombing in Beirut was a double suicide bombing in front of the Iranian embassy in Beirut, Lebanon on 19 November 2013. The two bombings resulted in 23 deaths and injured at least 160 others.
