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 Majid bin Muhammad al-Majid, a Saudi national who was wanted by
authorities in his own country, had been suffering from kidney
failure and went into a coma on Friday, the sources said. He died in
a military hospital in Beirut, they added.
Majid was believed to be the leader of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades,
which have claimed attacks across the region, most recently the
double suicide assault on Iran's Beirut embassy, which killed at
least 25 people.
His identity was confirmed by Lebanese officials on Friday after DNA
tests.
In tweets at the time of the bombing, the Abdullah Azzam brigades
threatened more attacks in Lebanon unless Iran pulled its forces out
of Syria.
An increasingly sectarian civil war there has attracted Sunni and
Shi'ite Muslim fighters from neighboring countries as well as
military support and economic aid from Iran.
Last year Azzam Brigades, named after an associate of the late al
Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, were formally designated by the U.S.
State Department as a foreign terrorist organization.
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The State Department said the group was divided into two branches:
the Yusuf al-'Uyayri Battalions, named after a founder of
Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula; and the Lebanon-based
Ziyad al-Jarrah Battalions, named after one of the airliner
hijackers who attacked New York and Washington on Sept. 11,
2001.
(Reporting by Dominic Evans; editing by Andrew Heavens)
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