Dentist, fighter: who is the first Saudi national killed by Israel in Lebanon

A Saudi was killed this weekend in an Israeli strike in Lebanon, according to information from our correspondent Mountasser Abdallah. Omran Karim, a dentist from Qatif, on the east coast of the kingdom, is the first Saudi national killed in Lebanon since the start of clashes between Hezbollah and the Israeli army on October 8, 2023.

Father and son of the alleged leader of the military wing of Saudi Hezbollah, imprisoned since 2015, what do we know about this man?

While no information was immediately available on the strike in which he was killed, several people paid tribute to him on Facebook, announcing that he had died while fighting alongside Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

The victim, of Shiite faith, had, according to the website of the Lebanese Dental Association, a practice in Bir el-Abed, in the southern suburbs of Beirut. He also managed a travel agency specializing in trips to Iran and had two daughters.

Tributes to Nasrallah and Kaouk

On his Facebook account, the dentist notably paid tribute, at the end of September, to the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, assassinated on September 27 by Israel. On October 2, he posted a photo of himself and Hussein Kaouk, a member of Hezbollah’s Executive Council, killed in a strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut on September 28. He says he met Hussein Kaouk there “at the end of 2016” when he arrived in Lebanon. In a publication, he writes that he mourned Nabil Kaouk and Hassan Nasrallah who were “like fathers” to him. This message, in which he indicates that he cried, is accompanied by a photo of him paying his respects to the remains of Sheikh Kaouk.

He also wrote several publications to pay tribute to the Shiite party fighters on the Southern Front.

Son of Saudi Hezbollah leader

Omran Karim is the son of Ahmad Ibrahim al-Moughassil, leader of Saudi Hezbollah or “Hezbollah of Hijaz”. Nicknamed “Abou Omran” (father of Omran), this man was wanted for several years by the United States and Saudi Arabia for terrorism, before being arrested in Beirut in 2015.

Omran Karim spoke several times on Facebook to pay tribute to his father.

In August 2022, he published a photo of Ahmad Ibrahim al-Moughassil on the seventh anniversary of his incarceration.

In 2016, he also greeted his mother married to a man “wanted by the House of Saud” and by “the CIA and Interpol”, who was then “on death row”.

American authorities had offered a five million dollar reward for information on Ahmad Ibrahim al-Moughassil, “alleged leader of the military wing of Saudi Hezbollah and wanted for his role in the 1996 Khobar Towers attack”, in Saudi Arabia. This attack killed 19 American soldiers who were staying in this residential complex as well as a Saudi. In 2001, al-Moughassil was designated a terrorist by the US State Department, and he was placed on the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorists” list. He was arrested in Beirut in August 2015 by Saudi intelligence services, according to CNN, and sent to Saudi Arabia.