KUALA LUMPUR (July 16): Syrian president Bashir al-Assad’s reputed “godfather of oil” Baraa al-Qaterji has reportedly been killed in an Israeli drone attack near the border with Lebanon.

Kurdish media Rudaw said the prominent Syrian businessman who has been affiliated with Bashar al-Assad was killed in an Israeli attack on Monday (July 15), according to a war monitor.

He had been sanctioned by Washington.

It said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that an Israeli drone hit a car in al-Sabboura village on the road between Damascus and Beirut, adding that Qaterji was killed in the airstrike.

He was “responsible for funding” Syria’s pro-Iran militants in the fight against Tel Aviv, it said.

Rudaw said the UK-based monitor said Qaterji was the head of a prominent company responsible for supplying regime-held areas with oil imported from the Kurdish-held region in northeast Syria.

SOHR also said Qaterji’s assistant was killed in the same attack without providing a name.

Qaterji was sanctioned by the US Department of Treasury in 2020 for “attempting to revive Syria’s deteriorating petroleum industry.”

His brother, Hussam al-Qaterji, was also sanctioned by Washington, labelling him the "godfather of the regime’s oil and wheat trade with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis)."

Israel has not commented on the incident, and the Syrian government did not confirm Qaterji’s death.