'He was like a ghost': How Israel killed top Hezbollah commander after luring him with a phone call

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A US report, citing an official from the Iran-backed Hezbollah, reveals that the Beirut airstrike that killed Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr last month occurred shortly after a call instructed him to move from his second-floor office to his seventh-floor residence, making him a more vulnerable target.

According to The Times of Israel, which referred to the Wall Street Journal, Hezbollah is collaborating with Iran to investigate the security breach. They suspect that Israel's advanced technological capabilities outmatched their countersurveillance efforts.

The WSJ noted that Shukr, who lived and worked in the same building to minimize his time outside, had gone into hiding after his involvement in planning the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847 from Athens to the US.

“We’d heard his name, but we never saw him,” the WSJ quoted a neighbor as saying. “He was like a ghost.”

On July 30, an Israel Defense Forces strike killed Fuad Shukr, his wife, two other women, and two children. This attack was in retaliation for a Hezbollah rocket assault on Majdal Shams that resulted in the deaths of 12 children and teenagers.

Shukr was a key figure in a 2006 cross-border raid that killed eight Israeli soldiers and led to two abductions, igniting a war in Lebanon. After the conflict, he is believed to have significantly increased Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal from about 15,000 to 150,000, positioning the group as the most heavily armed nonstate actor in the region.

According to the IDF, Shukr was responsible for facilitating the smuggling of Iranian components through Syria to convert unguided missiles into guided ones.

In early 2024, Shukr made a brief public appearance at the funeral of his nephew, who had been killed fighting Israel.

Shukr was a fugitive wanted by the US for his role in the 1983 bombing of a US Marines barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 American servicemen. After Hezbollah’s formal establishment in 1985, Shukr became its military commander.