Ibrahim Aqil, the second-in-command of Hezbollah, has been killed in a “targeted” airstrike in Beirut, Israel’s military confirmed.
He was killed alongside ten senior commanders in the Lebanese militant group’s elite Radwan force on Friday afternoon, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said.
Lebanese authorities reported that at least 12 were killed and 59 injured.
Hezbollah has not officially announced the death of Aqil, who had been wanted by the US for over four decades with a $7m bounty on his head over his involvement in the bombing of the US embassy in Beirut.
The assassination came on an intense day of fighting between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Hezbollah, who launched 140 Soviet-era Katyusha rockets across its border into northern Israel.
Earlier on Friday, the Israeli military said it destroyed at least 100 Hezbollah rocket launchers in one of its most intense bombardments of Lebanon since October.
Fears of a wider regional conflict have been growing after 37 people were killed and thousands more injured in a series of pager and walkie-talkie explosions across Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday.
IDF chief: Hezbollah commanders killed in strike were planning ‘their Oct 7’
The chief of the IDF, Herzi Halevi, said the Hezbollah commanders killed in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut had been planning an attack that would rival Oct 7.
“The Hezbollah commanders we eliminated today had been planning their ‘October 7th’ on the northern border for years. We reached them, and we will reach anyone who threatens the security of Israel’s citizens,” he said in a statement.
Israel shows it can strike Hezbollah at every level – analysis Adrian Blomfield
The reported killing of Ibrahim Aqil, identified as Hezbollah’s commander in charge of special operations, marks a return to a more conventional form of Israeli military action after this week’s double wave of synchronised sabotage attacks on the movement’s hand-held devices.
That does not make it any less potent tactically, however. Blowing up the pagers and walkie talkie radios used by Hezbollah fighters brought death, disruption and consternation to the movement’s rank-and-file – but spared senior commanders who did not use the devices.
This afternoon’s airstrike targeted the top level of Hezbollah’s command and control structure and comes less than two months after the assassination of Fuad Shukr, who, like Aqil, sat on the Jihad Council that runs the movement’s military wing.
Other senior military figures in Aqil’s Radwan Brigades, a special forces unit with a stated aim of infiltrating northern Israel, may also have been killed.
There is no doubt that this is therefore another startling Israeli intelligence success story, demonstrating Israel’s ability to strike Hezbollah at every level.
It is also worth bearing in mind that Shukr and Aqil eluded the United States for decades. Both were instrumental in orchestrating the attacks on the US embassy and a Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, killing more than 250 Americans.
So there is no doubting Israel’s military might. Questions about whether these individual successes constitute an effective strategy, either to force Hezbollah to climb down or to pave the way for a negotiated settlement, will continue to persist, however.
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