Nada Homsi & Jamie Prentis
The National / July 31, 2024
Israel accused Shukr of ordering attack on Majdal Shams in occupied Golan Heights.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah confirmed the death of its senior commander Fouad Shukr on Wednesday, a day after an Israeli strike hit a residential building in southern Beirut.
Hezbollah described Shukr as “a great martyr on the road to Jerusalem”, a phrase the group often uses to describe its members being killed.
An Iranian military adviser, Milad Bedi, was killed in the same strike, Iran’s Fars news agency reported soon after the announcement of Shukr’s death.
As rescue efforts came to a close on Wednesday evening, the final death toll from the Israeli strike on the southern Beirut suburb stood at seven people: three women and two children, and Shukr and Bedi.
At least 74 people were injured in the attack.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is expected to speak on Thursday, to express the group’s “political stance on this heinous attack and major crime”, the statement added.
Shukr is the most senior Hezbollah commander to be killed since Mustafa Badreddine was assassinated in Syria in 2016.
After announcing his death, Hezbollah released pictures of Shukr with Nasrallah and Badreddine, as well as the former leader of Iran’s Quds Force Qassem Suleimani and Hezbollah’s former military leader, Imad Mughniyeh.
The last two have since been assassinated.
Three other Hezbollah commanders have been killed since hostilities broke out between Israel and Hezbollah in October.
Hezbollah had previously said Shukr’s fate was unknown, contradicting a statement from the Israeli army that announced his “elimination” on Tuesday night after the strike hit Beirut’s Haret Hreik neighbourhood.
Hezbollah initially refrained from announcing the death of Shukr, until his body was found under the rubble later in the day.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the Israeli military for killing Shukr in a speech on Wednesday evening, describing it as one of several “crushing blows” against Iranian allies in the region over recent days.
Israel has described Shukr as Hezbollah’s most senior military commander and the right-hand man of the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
The US has said Shukr played a central role in the October 1983 bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut that killed 241 American personnel and wounded 128.
Israel said Shukr ordered the strike on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that killed 12 children at the weekend, and described the strike on Beirut as revenge for that attack.
Netanyahu had vowed a “severe” response against Hezbollah, while other Israeli leaders declared they were now in “all-out war”. Hezbollah has denied any involvement in the attack.
Shukr was also responsible for “the killing of numerous additional Israeli civilians”, the Israeli military said.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant posted a short message on X after the attack, stating: “Hezbollah crossed the red line”.
The Lebanese group has launched attacks on sites in northern Israel and the Golan Heights as part of a wider, Iran-led retaliation against Israel over the war in Gaza, which has killed more than 39,400 Palestinians since October 7.
Hezbollah will plan to respond to any Israeli retaliation for the Majdal Shams attack and has rejected diplomatic efforts to convince it otherwise, sources close to the group told The National on Tuesday, before the Beirut strike took place.
Previous attacks on Hezbollah commanders have been met with retaliation from the Iran-backed group.
By attacking the Lebanese capital, Israel will be seen by Hezbollah as having escalated the conflict again.
Since October, Israel has mainly concentrated its strikes on southern Lebanon, although it did assassinate Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut in January.
Fears of a regional war were heightened even more by the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran on Wednesday morning, just hours after the strike on Dahieh.
Haniyeh was killed in a strike on his Tehran residence, Hamas said in a statement. The Hamas leader was in Iran to attend the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps also announced Haniyeh’s death.
“Early this morning, the residence of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran was struck, resulting in his and one of his bodyguards’ martyrdom. The cause is under investigation and will be announced soon,” the IRGC said.
Israel has not yet commented on Haniyeh’s assassination.
Nada Homsi is a correspondent at The National’s Beirut bureau
Jamie Prentis has been a reporter at the London bureau
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Hezbollah’s Fouad Shukr, the strategist who expanded group’s regional reach
Jamie Prentis & Khaled Yacoub Oweis
The National / July 30, 2024
Senior commander who built Lebanese militia’s missile strike capacity was target of Israeli attack on Beirut.
Fouad Shukr, the Hezbollah commander targeted in an Israeli strike on Beirut on Tuesday night, is regarded as having played a major role in the build-up of the Lebanese group’s missile capabilities and its expansion into Syria in the last decade, furthering Iran’s rise as a regional power.
If his death is confirmed, Shukr would be the most senior Hezbollah figure to be assassinated since Imad Mughniyeh, its planner who was killed in Damascus in February 2008.
Two former Syrian military figures described Shukr as Mughniyeh’s successor in Hezbollah, and second in importance only to leader Hassan Nasrallah.
“He was crucial as an organizer, especially to Hezbollah’s missile capabilities. His role in Syria lessened in recent years, but he led the Hezbollah build-up there,” one of the sources said.
The sources said Shukr was sent to Damascus soon after the start of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in 2011 to oversee what would become a pervasive Hezbollah presence.
There, Hajj Mohsen, as Shukr was known, was responsible for Hezbollah personnel, the group’s arsenal, and setting up loyalist auxiliary brigades.
His contact on the Syrian side was Maj Gen Basam al-Hassan, the director of Presidential Palace Security and Military Office and one of the people closest to Al-Assad outside of his family circle, sources said.
In 2019, the US government’s Rewards for Justice program offered $5 million for information leading to Shukr’s whereabouts. It described him as a senior adviser on military affairs to Nasrallah.
Shukr, the US government said, also played a central role in the October 23, 1983 bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut.
The attack, one of the most defining moments in Middle East history, killed 241 personnel and wounded 128. It showed the lethal reach of Iranian-backed Shiite militants and led to the end of most of the direct US involvement in the Lebanese civil war.
Shukr is the latest of many Hezbollah commanders and senior figures linked to the group to be targeted by Israel in Lebanon and in Syria since the war in Gaza started in October.
Israel’s military said the strike on Tuesday was in retaliation for a rocket attack from Lebanon that killed 12 Druze children. Shukr, they said, was the commander responsible for the attack. Hezbollah denied any involvement in the strike.
He was also responsible for “the killing of numerous additional Israeli civilians”, the Israeli military said in a statement.
Hezbollah has attacked Israeli targets in northern Israel and in the occupied Golan Heights as part of a wider, Iranian-led retaliation against Israel for its invasion of the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian health officials say that more than 39,400 Palestinians has been killed in the Gaza war, which started on October 7, when Hamas and other militants supported by Iran killed 1,200 civilians in an attack on southern Israel.
Hezbollah has signaled in recent days that it will respond to any Israeli retaliation but so far it has not taken any significant action.
Jamie Prentis has been a reporter at the London bureau
Khaled Yacoub Oweis – Jordan correspondent, Amman
