Rights watchdog condemns Israel

A Syrian human rights watchdog denounced the Zionist regime as state terrorist, suggesting it was behind the assassination of a top Hezbollah commander.

"The killing of Imad Mugnieh in the Kfar Suseh neighbourhood of Damascus followed repeated threats by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to have Hezbollah and Hamas leaders killed wherever they are," the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria said.

"The action carried out by the Israeli government is a terrorist act of the sort condemned under international law," the watchdog's chairman Ammar Qorabi said.

"Israel has acknowledged in the past having assassinated the Palestinian Ezzedine Sheikh Khalil, one of the leaders of the Hamas movement," who died in a September 2004 car bombing in Damascus, Qorabi added.

Mughnieh, a senior Hezbollah commander was martyred in a car bombing late on Tuesday in a residential neighbourhood of the Syrian capital.