Hezbollah says its top military commander was killed in Syria by Sunni Islamist artillery fire and not by Israeli air strike as claimed.
"Investigations have showed the explosion, which targeted one of our bases near Damascus International Airport, and which led to the martyrdom of commander Mustafa Badreddine, was the result of artillery bombardment carried out by takfiri (hardline Sunni) groups," Hezbollah said in a statement on Saturday.
The Shi'ite Muslim group is fighting in Syria, backing President Bashar al-Assad against a range of Sunni groups including Islamic State and the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front.
But a war monitoring group cast doubt on its version of Badreddine's death, saying there had been no shelling by rebels in that area for more than a week.
Damascus airport and its surroundings are controlled by the Syrian government and allied forces. Between it and government-held central Damascus, rebels control a portion of the Eastern Ghouta suburb, which has experienced fighting for most of the conflict now in its sixth year.
"There has been no recorded shelling or firing from the Eastern Ghouta area onto Damascus International Airport for more than a week," Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdulrahman told Reuters.
Hezbollah's statement did not say when the attack took place or when Badreddine died. Badreddine was given a military funeral in Hezbollah's stronghold in southern Beirut on Friday.
"The outcome of the investigation (into Badreddine's death) will increase our determination ... to continue the fight against these criminal gangs and defeat them," Hezbollah said.
Iran-backed Hezbollah, considered a terrorist group by the United States and Gulf Arab states, wields enormous political influence in Lebanon alongside its powerful military wing.
Around 1200 Hezbollah fighters are estimated to have been killed in the Syrian conflict.
Badreddine was sentenced to death in Kuwait for his role in bomb attacks there in 1983 and escaped from a Kuwaiti jail after Saddam Hussein's Iraq invaded in 1990.
His release from jail in Kuwait was one of the demands made by the hijackers of a TWA flight in 1985, and of the hijackers of a Kuwait Airways flight in 1988.
For years, Badreddine masterminded military operations against Israel from Lebanon and overseas and managed to escape capture by Arab and Western governments.
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