Top Syrian official killed in Lebanon: SANA news agency

BEIRUT - Agence France-Presse

Lebanese Army soldiers secure the site of a roadside bomb as they stand near a damaged vehicle believed to carry members of Hezbollah, on a highway linking the town of Majdal Anjar to the Masnaa border crossing near the Lebanese-Syrian border July 16, 2013. REUTERS/Hassan Abdallah

A top Syrian official was assassinated by armed men Wednesday outside his home in south Lebanon, reports and an official said, in the first such killing on Lebanese soil.

Syrian news agency SANA named the official as Mohammad Darrar Jamo, who is head of the political and international relations division of the International Organisation for Arab Immigrants.

It said he was shot dead "by terrorists" in front of his house in Sarafand in south Lebanon, without specifying when he was killed.

Syrian regime officials refer to rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad's forces as "terrorists".

A Lebanese security official said Jamo was killed in the early hours of Wednesday.

"Mr Jamo was shot dead by armed men at about two in the morning as he was about to enter his home in Sarafand where he lives with his Lebanese wife," the official told AFP.

"They shot him with 20 bullets in different parts of his body," he said.

Jamo was known to be a pro-regime Syrian political expert who often appeared on Lebanese television.