BEIRUT — One of Syria’s most powerful military officers was killed in fighting with al-Qaeda-linked Islamic extremists in an oil-rich eastern province largely controlled by the rebels, Syrian state-run television said Thursday.
The fighting came amid a push to hold a peace conference for Syria’s civil war, with the government proposing the talks start late next month, though there was no sign the opposition would attend.
Maj. Gen. Jameh Jameh was killed in the provincial capital of Deir el-Zour, where he was the head of military intelligence, state-run TV said. He was the most senior military officer to be killed in more than a year.
The report did not say when or how Jameh was killed, only that he died “while he was carrying out his mission in defending Syria and its people.”
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Jameh was killed by a sniper during clashes with rebels, including members of Jabhat al-Nusra, or Nusra Front.
Jameh’s cousin, Haitham Jameh, told Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen TV that the general was killed when a bomb exploded as he led his troops in an operation in Deir el-Zour.
Jameh played a major role in Lebanon when Damascus dominated its smaller neighbor. When Syrian troops withdrew from Lebanon in 2005, ending nearly a three-decade military presence, Jameh was in charge of Syrian intelligence in the capital, Beirut.
