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Car bomb spectaculars, mistresses and 13 mobile phones - who was the Hizbollah boss killed in Syria?
One of the Middle East's most charismatic and mysterious guerrilla leaders has been killed in a explosion of unknown origin on an air base in Syria, the militant group Hizbollah has confirmed.
Mustafa Badreddine, 55, who was directing the group's operations in support of the Assad regime, was the highest ranking leader of the group to have died since his cousin and brother-in-law, its military commander, was assassinated in Damascus by Mossad in 2008.
Initial claims that Israel had killed Badreddine too were withdrawn, and the Hizbollah statement, which did not give a date or time of his death, said it was investigating whether it was the result of an air raid, missile attack or artillery shelling.
Whoever killed him - and his enemies now would include Gulf states and rebel groups in Syria as well as Israel - brought to an end the career of a man once seen as a ghostly presence in Hizbollah's command, who was reported to have no passport, driving licence or property in Lebanon, yet who had a string of mistresses and drove around the Christian seaside resort of Jounieh in a large Mercedes.
He is thought to have joined his first militant group in the 1970s as a teenager, before going on to help found Hizbollah, a militant, Iranian-backed Shia Islamist group that emerged from the Lebanese civil war.
He may have honed his skills as a bomb-maker in the attacks on the US and French military barracks in Beirut in 1983, which killed 305 people. That was masterminded by Imad Mugniyeh, his cousin and brother-in-law, Hizbollah's military chief and his mentor in the organisation, with whom he has said to have watched the explosions from a nearby rooftop.
A year later, Badreddine personally supervised the bombing of the US embassy in Kuwait, which killed six people. He was caught, jailed and sentenced to death. Luckily for him, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 and he was freed, escaping to the Iranian embassy which arranged his evacuation to Tehran and then back to Beirut.
He went on to direct operations against Israel in the south of Lebanon, culminating in the war of 2006, seen by many as Hizbollah's greatest victory over its great enemy.
At the time of his death he was standing trial in absentia at the Hague for organising the killing of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister and dominant Sunni politician.
Investigators tracked the 13 telephones owned by his alter ego - Sami Issa, a Christian jeweller from Jounieh, a man with an enviable success among women helped by his glamorous lifestyle.
His 13 phones never dialled each other. But the records shown to the inquiry revealed they regularly travelled together and did keep regular contact with Badreddine's wife and children, his Hizbollah colleagues, and Hizbollah's hit squad on the night before Hariri's death in a massive car bomb in 2005.
Hizbollah rarely comments on individual members' roles in its operations, and has denied killing Hariri. Of Badreddine, it said simply: "He took part in most of the operations of the Islamic resistance since 1982."
Israeli leaders, as is customary, refused to confirm or deny they had killed Badreddine. "This is good for Israel. Israel isn't always responsible for this. We don't know if Israel is responsible for this," Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser, told Israeli radio. "Remember that those operating in Syria today have a lot of haters without Israel."
But a missile which killed Mugniyeh's son, Jihad - also Badreddine's nephew - in Syria last year was ascribed to Israel, with Badreddine himself widely reported to be the intended target.
On the other hand, Israeli news sources were playing down the possibility of its involvement, and his death may end up being one more killing in Syria's war that ends up unexplained.
By this time he was leading Hizbollah's operations in support of President Bashar al-Assad, whom he met regularly along with Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah's overall leader.
Hizbollah's role in Syria has been controversial in Lebanon, and has led to the deaths of hundreds of Lebanese militia members - some put the toll at more than 1,200.
A US Treasury statement also said he had led Hizbollah ground offensives in the Syrian town of al-Qusayr in February 2013, a critical battle in the war when Hizbollah fighters defeated Syrian rebels in an area near the Syrian-Lebanese border.
Hizbollah said he would be buried in Beirut on Friday afternoon, and that he himself had said he would return from Syria "either victorious or a martyr".