WASHINGTON — The United States on Friday announced a reward of up to $10 million for any information leading to the location or identification of Salim Jamil Ayyash, a senior operative in the assassination unit of Hezbollah, a terrorist organization based in Lebanon. The bounty is part of the US Department of State's Rewards for Justice program that seeks to combat terrorism. In a press statement, US State Department, Ayyash is a senior operative in Hezballah's Unit 121, the group's assassinations squad which receives its orders directly from Hezballah leader Hasan Nasrallah. Ayyash is known to have been involved in efforts to harm US military personnel. On Dec. 11, 2020, an international tribunal sentenced Ayyash in absentia to five concurrent sentences of life imprisonment on terrorism-related charges pertaining to the February 2005 suicide truck bombing in Beirut that killed Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The attack also killed 21 others and wounded 226 persons. The tribunal found that Ayyash led the 'assassination team' that carried out the attack on Hariri and was actively involved in the assassination on the day of the attack. Ayyash was born Nov. 10, 1963 in Harouf, Lebanon. He has resided in multiple areas of Lebanon including Hadath, Nabatiyyeh, and Beirut's southern suburbs. Since its inception in 1984, the program has paid in excess of $200 million to more than 200 people who provided actionable information that helped bring terrorists to justice or prevented acts of international terrorism worldwide, the statement added.
