Lebanese group Hezbollah has confirmed that its senior commander Fuad Shukr was killed in an Israeli attack in southern Beirut.
The Israeli military said it carried out a “precision strike” in Beirut on Tuesday that killed Shukr, adding that he had been responsible for the missile strike that killed 12 children playing football in Majdal Shams in the occupied Golan Heights on Saturday.
Hezbollah, who previously said Shukr had survived the attack, said in a statement on Wednesday that “the great jihadist commander brother Fuad Shukr (Hajj Mohsen) was present” in the building targeted by “the Zionist enemy”.
Announcing his death, the group added that Shukr’s presence was “a distinctive force for resistance” and said their leader, Hassan Nasrallah, would make an address on the occasion of Shukr’s funeral on Thursday.
Who was Shukr?
Shukr, also known as al-Hajj Mohsen, was born in Nabatieh in Baalbek in eastern Lebanon. He was among Hezbollah’s founders after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
According to the Israeli military, Shukr oversaw numerous attacks against the Israeli military and its former ally, the South Lebanon Army (SLA), in the following decade.
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.
On Tuesday, the attack on a densely populated area in Beirut’s suburbs hit the Haret Hreik neighbourhood near Hezbollah’s Shura Council, its central decision-making authority.
Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said three people, including two children, were killed and 74 wounded in the attack that the Israeli military described as a “targeted assassination operation” against Shukr.
Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut, said the Israeli messaging is that this was their promised response to the Majdal Shams attack and that they are not interested in more armed confrontation with Hezbollah beyond this.
Hezbollah has promised to respond to any kind of attack from Israel, but Khodr said that a coordinated response from Iran and its regional allies following the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh this morning in Tehran, could take place.
In a televised statement on Wednesday, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel faces “challenging times ahead” but that it is “prepared for all scenarios”.
Earlier, Ori Goldberg, a political commentator in Tel Aviv, told Al Jazeera that “a war with Lebanon could perhaps rally Israelis around the flag but its effects would be almost immediately disastrous”.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has denounced strikes on Beirut and Tehran as a “dangerous escalation”.
“The Secretary-General believes that the attacks we have seen in South Beirut and Tehran represent a dangerous escalation at a moment in which all efforts should instead be leading to a ceasefire in Gaza,” Guterres’s spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement on Wednesday.
