Unidentified gunmen shot and killed a prominent Hezbollah leader Aref al-Jahmani in Syria’s southern province of Daraa, triggering a tension boom on Saturday night. The militia leader was murdered on the highway connecting the villages of Saida and western Al-Gharya.
The shooting comes when the provincial capital, Daraa, continues to suffer the toil of total blockade amid local rejection of “cheap blackmail” practiced by the Syrian regime and its key backer, Russia.
Opposition website “Horan Free” confirmed that al-Jahmani led an armed group of proxies working for Iran and Hezbollah in Saida, located east of Daraa.
Al-Jahmani’s militia operated under the command of the local Syrian intelligence director Col. Loay al-Ali and is believed to have staged missions, such as the assassination of anti-regime activists east of Daraa, for the Damascus intelligence division “215,” according to the website.
Local sources revealed that one of Al-Jahmani’s children, who was accompanying him at the time of the shooting, was also injured.
Many attempts at Al-Jahmani’s life had been made before, but none were successful. On April 30, he was mildly wounded alongside two armed group members in a failed assassination plot.
In other news, Daraa is witnessing rising security tensions and bracing for the possibility of a military escalation by the Syrian regime and Russia.
This follows rounds of negotiations between the regime and the Daraa Central Committees failing to improve the security situation in the governorate, where assassinations are witnessed daily, and complete security chaos continues to ravage the local population.
“The regime is taking advantage of the isolated assassinations that take place in separate areas of the province, to justify stripping locals from light arms they own, according to the 2018 settlement,” Daraa-based sources told Asharq Al-Awsat.
Locals complained against the measure, saying that Daraa city citizens have wholly complied with the settlement terms. No regime official or checkpoint was attacked in opposition-held areas, unlike what is happening in the regime-run territory, sources confirmed.
