Hezbollah senior commander Fouad Shukr. (Hezbollah Military Media)
Hezbollah confirmed on July 31 that senior commander Fuad Shukr was killed in an Israeli strike that targeted the outskirts of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, making him the most senior figure from the group to be killed in the ongoing conflict with Israel.
Shukr’s body was reportedly found under the rubble nearly 24 hours after the strike that hit Dahieh, Hezbollah’s stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
A military adviser from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Milad Bedi was killed in the strike along with Shukr. In addition, Lebanon’s health ministry said that the strike claimed the lives of five civilians, including two children, and left 80 other people wounded.
Shukr was one of Hezbollah’s most senior commanders and a military advisor to the group’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah.
The strike on Beirut happened hours before the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in the early hours of July 31 in Iran.
It was Israel’s response to a blast that killed 12 civilians in the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights on July 28. The Israeli military alleged that a rocket fired by Hezbollah was behind the blast. However, the group denied targeting the Syrian town.
Hezbollah said in a statement that Nasrallah would speak during Shukr’s funeral on August 1 and clarify the group’s “political stance” from the strike on Beirut. The group warned Israel more than once against targeting the Lebanese capital in the past and said that it would hit the city of Tel Aviv in response.
Hezbollah and its allies have been launching attacks from Lebanon against Israel since the outbreak of the war on the Palestinian enclave of the Gaza Strip last October. Aside from the last strike on Beirut, Israel has so far limited its response to air and artillery strikes on Lebanon’s south and the eastern Bekaa Valley.
Still, the limited border clashes have so far claimed the lives of at least 30 Israelis and more than 600 people on the Lebanese side.
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