Middle East Crisis: Live Updates: With Death Toll Rising, Tensions Run High After Israeli Strike in Beirut
Ibrahim Aqeel, the Hezbollah commander targeted by Israel on Friday in Beirut, is one of the Iran-backed Lebanese armed group’s most senior leaders.
Lebanon’s health ministry said at least eight people were killed and dozens injured in the strike, though it was not immediately clear if he was among them. Hezbollah did not comment on the attack.
Believed to be in his 60s, he had already survived multiple assassination attempts, and the United States had offered a multimillion-dollar bounty for his capture.
A member of Hezbollah more or less since its establishment in the 1980s, Mr. Aqeel served on the group’s highest military body, the Jihad Council. Over the past two decades, Israel has slowly killed many of the Jihad Council’s members, who are some of the closest advisers to Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
U.S. officials wanted Mr. Aqeel for his role in two bombing attacks in 1983 that killed more than 350 people at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the U.S. Marine Corps barracks, many of them American citizens, according to the State Department.
Last year, the State Department posted a reward of up to $7 million for information leading to his identification, location, arrest or conviction. It said Mr. Aqeel also directed the abduction of American and German hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, described Mr. Aqeel as the chief of Hezbollah’s military operations directorate and the de facto commander of the Radwan force, an elite commando unit. He was responsible for overseeing Hezbollah’s anti-tank missile units and air-defense operations, among other roles, Admiral Hagari said.
“Aqeel had large amounts of blood on his hands,” he told reporters at a news conference. “He was responsible for the deaths of many civilians and innocents.”
Mr. Aqeel helped plan a never-carried-out Hezbollah invasion of northern Israel similar to that of the Hamas-led assault of southern Israel on Oct. 7, Admiral Hagari said.
Israeli officials have long warned that Hezbollah hoped to one day send its highly trained fighters across the border, conquering Israeli towns and seizing hostages in a bloody blow to their foes.
In 2019, Mr. Nasrallah confirmed that the group had operational plans for entering northern Israel in the event of a war but declined to give details. The Israeli military says it has uncovered multiple cross-border tunnels intended to facilitate such an attack.
Israel assassinated another member of Hezbollah’s Jihad Council, Fuad Shukr, in late July, in another airstrike on a building in Dahiya, a southern suburb of Beirut. Former U.S. officials called Mr. Shukr, like Mr. Aqeel, one of Hezbollah’s most senior military leaders and a confidant of Mr. Nasrallah.
Assaf Orion, a retired Israeli brigadier general, said on Friday that Mr. Aqeel was effectively the top operations officer in Hezbollah’s military apparatus, one who was involved in “numerous” attacks against Israelis.
“He’s an extremely seasoned operations veteran,” said General Orion, a former Israeli military liaison to the international peacekeeping mission along the Lebanese-Israeli border.
Israel had tried to assassinate Mr. Aqeel numerous times in the past, but each time he managed to escape with his life, General Orion said.
In 2000, Israeli helicopters fired on Mr. Aqeel’s car in an attempt to avenge the killing of a Lebanese militia leader aligned with Israel, but he survived with only slight injuries. Five civilians were also lightly wounded, including an infant.
Share
Print
