Palestinian commander killed in Syria buried in refugee camp

‘They were waiting for him. He was killed with a weapon fitted with a silencer,” al-Aswad’s wife, who identified herself as Um Abdul-Rahman, told The Associated Press.

Al-Aswad was buried in the Martyrs’ Cemetery in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp on the southern outskirts of Damascus.

The woman said she checked the stairs after hearing the creaking but saw nothing. After 45 minutes she received a call from people asking about him and when she looked out the window she saw her husband’s body lying in their backyard.

“He looked like he was asleep,” she said. The 29-year-old woman said the couple has two daughters and a son.

There was no statement from Israel about the assassination of al-Aswad.

Islamic Jihad said in a statement that the family had settled in Syria in 1948 after Israel was established. The group said al-Aswad joined the organization as a young man.

In 2019, Israeli warplanes fired rockets at the Damascus home of Akram Ajouri, a member of the Islamic Jihad leadership who lives in exile. Ajouri was not injured, but his son is believed to have been killed in the attack.

Last month, airstrikes on residential areas in Damascus that killed at least five people, according to Syrian officials, were blamed on Israel.

The militant group had warned Israel in a statement that there would be “a decisive response without delay to any assassination attempt against the leaders of the resistance”.

Israel has carried out hundreds of attacks on targets in government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years, including attacks on Damascus and Aleppo airports, but rarely acknowledges or discusses the operations.