US adds 2 members of Hezbollah to terrorism sanctions list

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration says it has added two senior members of Hezbollah to its terrorism sanctions list.

The State Department said Monday that Ali Damush and Mustafa Mughniyeh have been named Specially Designated Global Terrorists.

Mughniyeh is a Hezbollah commander with extensive family links to the Lebanon-based militant group. He’s the nephew of Hezbollah’s previous military commander, Mustafa Badreddine, who was killed in an explosion near the Syrian capital in last year, and the son of military commander Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed in a 2008 car bombing in Damascus that Hezbollah blamed on Israel.

Damush is an aide to the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah. He heads the group’s foreign relations department, which the State Department says “engages in covert terrorist operations around the world.”