Israeli blast kills noted Syrian

BEIRUT — An Israeli drone strike on a car Monday near the Lebanon-Syria border killed a prominent Syrian businessman who was sanctioned by the United States and had close ties to the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to pro-government media and an official from an Iran-backed group.

Mohammed Baraa Katerji was killed when a drone strike hit his car near the area of Saboura, a few miles inside Syria after apparently crossing from Lebanon

The strike came as Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah group have been exchanging fire on an almost daily basis since early October, after the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

An official from an Iran-backed group said that Katerji, 48, was killed instantly while in his SUV on the highway linking Lebanon with Syria. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.

Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based opposition war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that Katerji was killed while in a car with Lebanese licence plates, adding that he was apparently targeted because he used to fund the “Syrian resistance” against Israel in the Golan Heights, as well as his links to Iran-backed groups in Syria.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, sanctioned Katerji in 2018 as Assad’s middleman to trade oil with the Islamic State group and for facilitating weapons shipments from Iraq to Syria.

The U.S. Treasury declined Associated Press requests for comment. The sanctions imposed on Katerji were authorized under an Obama-era executive order issued in 2011 that prohibits certain transactions with Syria. A search of the OFAC database indicates that the sanctions were still in effect against Katerji and his firm at the time of his death.

Meanwhile, Hassan Nasrallah, he leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah terrorist group, said in a televised speech Monday night that, because of the ongoing fighting with Israel, his Shiite group will not hold rallies in much of southern Lebanon this week commemorating the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Hussein.

Ashoura is one of the most important dates on the Shiite calendar.

Elsewhere, two suspected attacks by Yemen’s Houthi terrorists targeted ships in the Red Sea on Monday, as a new U.S. aircraft carrier approached the region to provide security for the key international trade route that has been under assault since the Israel-Hamas war erupted nine months ago.

The captain of the first targeted ship reported being attacked by three small vessels off the coast of Al Hudaydah, Yemen, the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said, adding that two of the vessels were crewed and another uncrewed.

Later on Monday, in a separate incident also off the coast of Al Hudaydah, a vessel reported being attacked by a suspected uncrewed Houthi aerial vehicle, which “impacted on the port side causing some damage and light smoke,” the UKMTO reported.

Both ships and all crew are reported safe, the UKMTO said in a warning to mariners. Names and flags of the ships were not immediately known.