Over Tuesday evening, Israel launched an air strike killing Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut, Lebanon. This got here hours earlier than the assassination of Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in Iran, for which the Palestinian group has blamed Israel.
Hezbollah confirmed Shukr’s demise within the air strike on Wednesday evening, a day after Israel has claimed it had killed the Hezbollah chief.
Right here’s what we find out about Shukr, and why he was thought-about a outstanding goal by Israel.
Who was Fuad Shukr?
“Shukr was one in every of a variety of veteran Hezbollah officers who had been among the many founders of the group’s army wing,” stated Nicholas Blanford, an skilled on Hezbollah with the Atlantic Council think-tank.
“They’ve all the time lived within the shadows,” he stated of the group’s army leaders. Nonetheless, Israeli army officers described Shukr as an in depth adviser of Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, and a person liable for acquiring the majority of the group’s extra superior weapons, “together with precise-guided missiles, cruise missiles, antiship missiles, long-range rockets, and UAVs”.
Shukr was a outstanding buddy of Hezbollah’s former army commander Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated by Israel in Damascus in 2008, after which Shukr’s prominence inside the group rose, Hezbollah stated.
Why did Israel goal him now?
In response to Israeli army planners, Shukr had been liable for the missile strike that killed 12 youngsters taking part in soccer in Majdal Shams within the occupied Golan Heights on Saturday. Hezbollah, for its half, denied accountability for the strike.
The strike proved to be a flashpoint inside Israeli politics when a delegation of Israeli ministers making an attempt to go to the funerals of among the killed youngsters — after ignoring a request not to take action — had been assaulted verbally by villagers mourning the lack of the kids.
On Monday, the Israeli Safety Council authorised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant to take no matter motion they thought acceptable.
How was Shukr killed?
On the time of the strike, Shukr was within the Haret Hreik district of Daniya, a suburb in southern Beirut.
A Hezbollah assertion stated that “the nice jihadist commander brother Fuad Shukr (Hajj Mohsen) was current” within the constructing focused by “the Zionist enemy”.
Footage of the constructing after the strike exhibits intensive injury, with rubble and particles cascading onto the road under. Lebanon’s well being ministry confirmed that three civilians, together with two youngsters, had been killed and 74 wounded in what Israel characterised as its “intelligence-based elimination”.
![[Handout/US State Department]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/21-July-Fuad-Shukr-English-1722427020.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C451)
What was Shukr’s historical past with Hezbollah?
Shukr, also referred to as al-Hajj Mohsen, was born in Nabatieh in Baalbek in japanese Lebanon.
Twenty years later, he was amongst Hezbollah’s founders after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Shukr maintained his function inside the group all through the Eighties, with america accusing him of overseeing the bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in 1983 when he was in his early 20s.
In response to the Israeli army, Shukr oversaw quite a few assaults in opposition to the Israeli army and its former ally, the South Lebanon Military (SLA) throughout the next decade.
In 2000, Israeli officers accused him of orchestrating the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli troopers throughout a Hezbollah assault on the Shebaa Farms area, the small strip of land on the intersection of Syria, Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights whose sovereignty stays disputed.
Along with being sought by Israel, Shukr was additionally wished by the US. A posting on the US authorities’s Rewards for Justice web site provides fee of as much as $5m for data on Shukr after naming him a “Specifically Designated International Terrorist” in 2019.
What had been the reactions to Shukr’s killing?
On X, Gallant wrote in English, “Fuad Shukr ‘Sayyid’ Muhsan has the blood of many Israelis on his arms. Tonight, now we have proven that the blood of our individuals has a worth, and that there isn’t a place out of attain for our forces to this finish.”
Tonight, the IDF performed a exact {and professional} operation to get rid of Hezbollah’s most senior army commander.
Fuad Shukr ‘Sayyid’ Muhsan has the blood of many Israelis on his arms. Tonight, now we have proven that the blood of our individuals has a worth, and that there isn’t a…
— יואב גלנט – Yoav Gallant (@yoavgallant) July 30, 2024
Inside Lebanon, Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the “blatant Israeli aggression,” describing the assassination as a “felony act” in a “sequence of aggressive operations killing civilians in clear and specific violation of worldwide regulation”.
The United Nations’ particular coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, expressed her deep concern over the strike, underscoring “as soon as once more that there isn’t a such factor as a army resolution” to the continued battle, a press release stated.
In Washington, White Home Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre informed reporters that US President Joe Biden maintained {that a} wider conflict between Israel and Hezbollah may very well be prevented, saying “We don’t wish to see an escalation, we don’t wish to see an all-out conflict.”
