Syria on Wednesday confirmed the assassination of a top army general believed by the Arab media to have been the Syrian regime's liaison with Hizbullah.

"(Mohammed) Suleiman, an officer of the Syrian Arab Army has been assassinated," Butheina Shaaban, an adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, told reporters.

"An investigation is underway," she added.

On Sunday Arab media reported that Suleiman had been murdered.

The Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat quoted "informed sources" in London as saying that a senior Syrian officer had been found dead.

"The circumstances of the incident are not clear," the London-based paper said in its report, which said the sources suggested that the slain officer had been "in charge of sensitive files and closely linked to the Syrian top brass."

Al-Bawaba, an Arab news website, named the officer as Mohammed Suleiman and said he was "Syria's liaison officer with Lebanon's Hizbullah movement."

It said he was killed by a sniper in the coastal city of Tartous.

The Lebanese anti-Syrian daily al-Mustaqbal quoted a Syrian news site as saying Suleiman was the head of security at the presidential palace in Damascus and Assad's "right-hand man."

The paper made no mention of Hizbullah in its report.

A Hizbullah official told AFP in Lebanon that he did not know Mohammed Suleiman and had not heard about any killing.

The reports came almost six months after the killing in a Damascus car bombing of top Hizbullah military commander Imad Mughniyeh, which the Shiite group blamed on Israel.

Israel has denied the Hizbullah charge that it was behind the assassination of Mughniyeh in the Syrian capital on February 12.(AFP)