Over Tuesday night, Israel launched an air strike killing Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut, Lebanon. This came hours before the assassination of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Iran, for which the Palestinian group has blamed Israel.

Hezbollah confirmed Shukr’s death in the air strike on Wednesday night, a day after Israel has claimed it had killed the Hezbollah leader.

Here’s what we know about Shukr, and why he was considered a prominent target by Israel.

Who was Fuad Shukr?

“Shukr was one of a number of veteran Hezbollah officials who were among the founders of the group’s military wing,” said Nicholas Blanford, an expert on Hezbollah with the Atlantic Council think-tank.

“They’ve always lived in the shadows,” he said of the group’s military leaders. Nevertheless, Israeli military officials described Shukr as a close adviser of Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, and a man responsible for obtaining the bulk of the group’s more advanced weapons, “including precise-guided missiles, cruise missiles, antiship missiles, long-range rockets, and UAVs”.

Shukr was a prominent friend of Hezbollah’s former military commander Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated by Israel in Damascus in 2008, after which Shukr’s prominence within the group rose, Hezbollah said.

Why did Israel target him now?

According to Israeli military planners, Shukr had been responsible for the missile strike that killed 12 children playing football in Majdal Shams in the occupied Golan Heights on Saturday. Hezbollah, for its part, denied responsibility for the strike.

The strike proved to be a flashpoint within Israeli politics when a delegation of Israeli ministers attempting to visit the funerals of some of the killed children — after ignoring a request not to do so — were assaulted verbally by villagers mourning the loss of the children.

On Monday, the Israeli Security Council authorised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant to take whatever action they thought appropriate.

How was Shukr killed?

At the time of the strike, Shukr was in the Haret Hreik district of Daniya, a suburb in southern Beirut.

A Hezbollah statement said that “the great jihadist commander brother Fuad Shukr (Hajj Mohsen) was present” in the building targeted by “the Zionist enemy”.

Footage of the building after the strike shows extensive damage, with rubble and debris cascading onto the street below. Lebanon’s health ministry confirmed that three civilians, including two children, had been killed and 74 wounded in what Israel characterised as its “intelligence-based elimination”.

What was Shukr’s history with Hezbollah?

Shukr, also known as al-Hajj Mohsen, was born in Nabatieh in Baalbek in eastern Lebanon.

Twenty years later, he was among Hezbollah’s founders after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Shukr maintained his role within the group throughout the 1980s, with the United States accusing him of overseeing the bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in 1983 when he was in his early 20s.

According to the Israeli military, Shukr oversaw numerous attacks against the Israeli military and its former ally, the South Lebanon Army (SLA) during the following decade.

In 2000, Israeli officials accused him of orchestrating the abduction and killing of three Israeli soldiers during a Hezbollah attack on the Shebaa Farms region, the small strip of land at the intersection of Syria, Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights whose sovereignty remains disputed.

In addition to being sought by Israel, Shukr was also wanted by the US. A posting on the US government’s Rewards for Justice website offers payment of up to $5m for information on Shukr after naming him a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” in 2019.

What were the reactions to Shukr’s killing?

On X, Gallant wrote in English, “Fuad Shukr ‘Sayyid’ Muhsan has the blood of many Israelis on his hands. Tonight, we have shown that the blood of our people has a price, and that there is no place out of reach for our forces to this end.”

Within Lebanon, Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the “blatant Israeli aggression,” describing the assassination as a “criminal act” in a “series of aggressive operations killing civilians in clear and explicit violation of international law”.

The United Nations’ special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, expressed her deep concern over the strike, underscoring “once again that there is no such thing as a military solution” to the ongoing conflict, a statement said.

In Washington, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that US President Joe Biden maintained that a wider war between Israel and Hezbollah could be avoided, saying “We do not want to see an escalation, we do not want to see an all-out war.”

SOURCE: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/31/who-isfuad-shukr