A Canadian citizen of Lebanese origin is reported to have been killed this week in fighting in Syria.
Fawzi Ayoub, 48, was also a senior member of the Shi’ite militant group Hezbollah while fighting alongside Syrian government forces against rebels. Canada listed Hezbollah as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code in December 2002.
Hezbollah has joined the Syrian government in a increasingly sectarian conflict which seems to be drawing in fighters from several divergeant groups in the region with fears of destabilizing Syria’s neighbours.
He was apparently killed when the mostly Sunni Free Syrian Army launced an attack in the city of Aleppo. Sunni Islamist groups, some connected to Al Qaeda, have joined in the fight against the Assad regime in the civil war which has raged for three years.
Ayoub immigrated to Canada in 1988 and obtained Canadian citizenship in 1992. He later moved to the US before leaving for the middle east. He was on the FBI’s terrorist list for using a fake US passport to enter Israel in an attempted bomb plot in 2009.
He is reported to have Canadian family still living in Toronto, Ontario.
The Canadian and other western governments have become increasingly concerned about numbers of their citizens leaving to take part in ethnic and religious conflicts in other parts of the world. It is suspected that there are currently dozens of Canadian citizens taking part in such activities.
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