Senior Hezbollah Commander Killed in Beirut The attackers waited in an olive grove around midnight. As the Hezbollah commander pulled into the garage of his nearby apartment building, they went in after him. Five bullets were pumped into his head and neck from a silencer-equipped pistol - an assassination that reverberated across the Middle East. The killing early Wednesday of Hassan al-Laqis, described as a member of the inner circle of Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, was the latest in a series of recent attacks against the Iranian-backed group. Hezbollah blamed Israel, which denied involvement. However, the Shiite militant group's open support of Syrian President Bashar Assad has enraged Sunnis and left it with no shortage of enemies eager to strike at its strongholds and leadership. Dozens of people have been killed in deadly car bombings claimed by radical Sunni groups. The group's participation in the civil war in Syria is highly divisive and unpopular in Lebanon, where many feel it has deviated from its raison d'etre of fighting Israel and exposed the Shiite community to retaliation. Most recently, two suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the Iranian Embassy in Beirut, killing 23. An al-Qaida-affiliated group claimed responsibility, saying it was payback for Hezbollah's support of Assad. Al-Laqis' killing came shortly after Nasrallah accused Saudi Arabia of being behind the embassy bombings in a sharp escalation in rhetoric against the Sunni regional powerhouse. In a three-hour interview with a local TV station, he indirectly suggested an alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia was trying to destabilize his group. The Saudi monarchy is engaged in a proxy war with Iran over influence in the region, and in that, Riyadh has increasingly found common ground with the Jewish state. "The assassination is another notch in tensions between Hezbollah and Saudi Arabia," said Kamel Wazne, founder of the Center for American Strategic Studies in Beirut. There will be repercussions. It's going to be more like an open battle," he said. Two previously unknown Sunni groups claimed responsibility on Twitter for al-Laqis' assassination, but the claims could not be verified. Al-Laqis, 53, was killed as he returned home from work, Hezbollah said. "The brother martyr Hassan al-Laqis spent his youth and dedicated all his life in this honorable resistance since its inception up until the last moments of his life," a statement from the group said. An official close to the highly secretive group said al-Laqis held some of Hezbollah's most sensitive portfolios and was very close to Nasrallah and his inner circle, often acting as a link with officials in Tehran. "He was one of the brains behind much of the group's operations," the official said. Hezbollah distributed a photo of al-Laqis and said Israel had tried to kill him several times. The image showed a man wearing beige-and-khaki military clothes, with neatly cut black hair and a graying close-cropped beard. There were conflicting reports on whether he was involved in the Syria war, where the group's fighters have helped Assad's troops gain the upper hand in key areas near the border with Lebanon. Marie Harf, deputy spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, said the U.S. has seen reports of the killing and was looking to all parties "to cooperate with a full investigation."