Israel’s military struck a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut’s suburbs on July 30, saying it targeted the commander responsible for the attack on 12 Israeli children and teens in the town of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued a statement saying Israeli Air Force fighter jets had eliminated Fuad Shukr, also known as “Sayyid Muhsan,” Hezbollah’s “most senior military commander.”
Mr. Shukr served as Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah’s right-hand man and was his adviser for planning and directing wartime operations, the IDF said.
Mr. Shukr has directed Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel since Oct. 8, the IDF said, and was the commander responsible for the killing of 12 children in Majdal Shams on July 27.
Hezbollah first acknowledged the attack, then backtracked after it became clear the victims were Druze, a non-Jewish ethnically Arab minority group.
As the head of Hezbollah’s Strategic Unit, the IDF said, Mr. Shukr was responsible for the majority of Hezbollah’s most advanced weaponry, including precise-guided missiles, cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, long-range rockets, and UAVs.
Mr. Shukr joined Hezbollah in 1985. He is widely reported to have been one of those responsible for the Beirut barracks bombing in 1983 that killed 241 U.S. servicemembers, and to have been wanted by the U.S. government for that.
The United States placed Mr. Shukr on its principal terrorist list in 2019.
The strike hit Haret Hreik in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold.
Both White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre and State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel declined to comment in briefings immediately after the strike. Both said a wider war is not inevitable and urged continuation of efforts to reach a diplomatic solution.
“Israel has every right to defend itself, certainly for the things like malign, Iran-backed proxies like Hezbollah,” Mr. Patel said at a press briefing. “It certainly faces threats like no other country does in that region of the world.
“We of course want to make sure that through our diplomacy conditions can be created in which civilians can return home.”
Israel and Hezbollah have conducted an accelerated battle of rockets and air strikes across the border since the soccer field strike on July 27.
It was not immediately clear if any Hezbollah official was hit.
The airstrike damaged several buildings, collapsing half of an apartment building next to a hospital. The hospital sustained minor damage.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that the strike killed one woman and wounded several other people, some of them seriously. The wounded were taken to nearby hospitals. Bahman Hospital near the site of the blast called on people to donate blood.
Lebanon’s foreign ministry said Lebanon will file an urgent complaint with the U.N. Security Council over what it called Israel’s violation of its sovereignty by disrupting its navigation systems.
It said Israel was affecting the safety of civil aviation in the airspace of Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport.
“Lebanon also holds Israel internationally responsible for the consequences of any accident or disaster caused by Israel’s deliberate policy of jamming air and ground navigation systems, and deliberately disrupting signal receiving and transmitting devices,” the foreign ministry’s statement said.
The Biden administration has sought to contain Israel’s expected retaliation to avoid escalating to a wider war and specifically requested it not to strike Beirut or the Hezbollah strongholds outside it.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned from a visit to the United States on Sunday and received authorization from his cabinet to decide on the manner and timing of retaliation. At a memorial for the victims of the soccer field attack, he promised a “severe” response.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called Hezbollah’s strike an escalation and the worst attack on Israel since Hamas’s Oct. 7 cross-border massacre from Gaza.
Hezbollah, the Iran-supported terrorist group controlling southern Lebanon, has attacked northern Israel in support of Hamas since Oct. 8, with Israel retaliating with its own cross-border strikes.
