WASHINGTON, Feb 12: The United States offered five million dollar rewards on Monday for the capture of the Damascus-based head of the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad and a member of Lebanon's Hezbollah militia.

The State Department named the two, both on the FBI's most-wanted terrorist list, as Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah, general secretary of Islamic Jihad, and Mohammed Ali Hamadei of Hezbollah.

Under its Rewards for Justice programme, the State Department said it would offer up to five million dollars for information leading to the capture of either Hamadei or Shallah.

Hamadei, believed to be living in Lebanon, was indicted by a US federal grand jury for murder and 14 other charges related to the 1985 hijacking of a US airliner during which a Navy diver, Robert Stethem, was beaten to death and his body dumped on the tarmac of Athens airport.Hamadei was arrested in Germany in 1987 for smuggling explosives into the country and tried and convicted for Stethem's murder, but was paroled in December 2005 and returned to Lebanon.

Washington requested his extradition from Lebanon a year ago, when he was also added to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Most Wanted list.-—AFP