Slain Brig. Gen. Mohammed Suleiman, who was a key aide to Syrian President Bashar Assad, had been supplying Hizbullah with advanced Syrian SA-8 anti-aircraft missiles, Britain's Sunday Times quoted Middle East sources as saying.

"If Syria has passed Russian-made SA-8 mobile launchers to Hizbullah," the party "is in possession of a potent weapon to defy Israeli air power," the Sunday Times said.

Media reports said Suleiman, 49, was killed by sniper fire as he sat in the garden of his summer house near the northern port city of Tartus.

Suleiman was "more important than anyone else," wrote the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper last week.

"He was senior even to the defense minister. He knew everything," it said.

Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently warned that Hizbullah was straining his country's patience in Lebanon and the Shiite group announced last week its next step would be to stop Israeli fighter jets violating Lebanese airspace.

During the Syrian president's visit to Paris last month, Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert asked French President Nicolas Sarkozy to tell Assad that he was "crossing a red line supplying arms to Hizbullah in Lebanon," the Sunday Times quoted Israeli sources as saying.