Prominent Syrian businessman Baraa Katerji, a close confidante of President Bashar al-Assad, was killed in a suspected Israeli strike near the Lebanese-Syrian border on Monday, three security sources told Reuters.
For years, Israel has frequently struck Iranian-linked targets in Syria, without claiming responsibility in most cases. These attacks have intensified recently amid the Gaza conflict and ongoing clashes with Hezbollah on the Lebanon-Israel border.
However, a security source has told Al Arabiya that Katerji was killed by an improvised explosive device (IED) rather than an Israeli airstrike.
Katerji, known for his close ties to the Syrian government, played a significant role in the financing operations of Iran's IRGC Quds Force and its proxies including Lebanon's Hezbollah, as reported by Al Arabiya.
The prominent businessman was killed instantly in his SUV on the highway linking Lebanon with Syria, an unnamed official from an Iran-backed group told the Associated Press on Monday.
Katerji may have been targeted because he had funded the Syrian "resistance" against Israel in the Golan Heights, as well as because of his links to Iran-backed groups in Syria, Rami Abdulrahman, the director of the London-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), told the AP.
Abdulrahman said the precision of the strike indicates a significant security breach within either Hezbollah or the Assad regime's inner circle, suggesting that highly sensitive information had been leaked to Israel.
Katerji's extensive business empire, built with his brother, is currently under US sanctions for "facilitating petroleum shipments and financing to the Syrian regime," according to the US Treasury website.
The UK has also sanctioned the Katerji brothers for "facilitating fuel, arms, and ammunition trade between the regime and various actors including ISIS (Daesh) under the guise of importing and exporting food items, supporting militias fighting alongside the regime," according to the UK Treasury Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation.