[News] Hezbollah says top commander Fuad Shukr killed in Israeli strike on Beirut

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 Hezbollah says top commander Fuad Shukr killed in Israeli strike on Beirut

*Lebanon’s Health Ministry said three people, including two children, were
killed and 74 also wounded in the attack.*
[image: People gather where an Israeli air strike targeted the southern
parts of Beirut.]
Civil defence members and local residents gather near a site hit by an
Israeli strike in Beirut, Lebanon on Tuesday, July 30, 2024 [Mohamed
Azakir/Reuters]
Published On 31 Jul 2024 -
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/31/hezbollahsays-top-commander-fuad-shukr-killed-in-israel-strike-on-beirut
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Lebanese group Hezbollah has confirmed that its senior commander Fuad Shukr
was killed in an Israeli attack in southern Beirut
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/30/explosion-in-beirut-suburb-as-israel-says-it-targeted-hezbollah-commander>
.

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
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/27/israel-says-10-killed-in-rocket-attack-on-occupied-golan-heights>
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 <https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/31/who-isfuad-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
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/30/israel-strikes-beirut-what-we-know-so-far>
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
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/7/31/israels-war-on-gaza-live-israel-hits-beirut-in-assassination-operation>
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.
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