The Israeli military carried out a “targeted attack” on Friday, killing one of Hezbollah’s top military commanders, Ibrahim Aqil, along with seven others and in the Lebanese capital, Beirut.
The air strike, who also injured 59 people, is the third to hit the southern suburbs of Beirut since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7, with the focus of the violence shifting dramatically this week from Gaza to Lebanon.
Hezbollah faced an unprecedented attack on Tuesday and Wednesday, which the group has blamed on Israel, although Israel has yet to comment. This attack involved the explosion of thousands of communication devices used by Hezbollah operatives over two days, killing 37 people and wounding thousands more.
Who is Ibrahim Aqil?
Ibrahim Aqil was the chief of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces, the group’s top military unit.
He was also the second-in-command of the armed forces, following Fuad Shukr. Earlier this year, strikes blamed on Israel killed Fuad Shukr, a top commander of Hezbollah, as well as Saleh al-Aruri, a leader of its allied Palestinian militant group, Hamas.
Although Hezbollah has not officially confirmed his death, it stated after the strike that it had targeted an Israeli intelligence base, claiming it was responsible for unspecified “assassinations.”
According to the US Department of State, Aqil served on Hezbollah’s highest military body, the Jihad Council. In the 1980s, Aqil was a key member of Hezbollah’s Islamic Jihad Organisation, which claimed responsibility for significant attacks, including the bombings of the US Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, resulting in 63 deaths, and the bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in October 1983, which killed 241 US personnel.
Aqil also directed the taking of American and German hostages in Lebanon during that period. The US had announced a reward of up to $7 million in April 2023 for information about him.
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