Israel on Friday said it killed the commander of Hezbollah‘s elite unit in a strike that, according to Lebanese officials, left 14 dead and many others wounded in Beirut.
Ibrahim Aqil, who was wanted by the United States for involvement in the 1983 bombing of the US embassy in Beirut, headed the Iran-backed militant group’s elite Radwan Force.
AFP journalists at the scene of the strike said that the attack left a massive crater and gutted the lower floors of a high-rise building in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Aqil’s death was also confirmed by the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, which described him as “one of its great leaders” who was killed “on the road to Jerusalem”, a phrase the group uses to refer to fighters killed by Israel.
Aqil’s killing was the second of a senior Hezbollah commander since the start of the war in Gaza. Another Israeli strike in Beirut in July killed Fuad Shukr, a top operations chief for the movement, according to AFP.
Who was Ibrahim Aqil?
Ibrahim Aqil was born in Baalbek in the east of Lebanon and joined Hezbollah in its early days in the 1980s, according to the Associate Press.
Aqil was a member of Hezbollah’s highest military body, the Jihad Council since 2008, and head of the elite Radwan Forces. The forces also fought in Syria gaining experience in urban warfare and counterinsurgency.
Very little is known about Aqil, who rose through the ranks of the group’s military command over decades.
Elijah Magnier, a Brussels-based military and counterterrorism analyst with knowledge of the group, told the Associated Press that he was one of the group’s old guards.
“He started at the beginning of Hezbollah’s creation, and he moved to different responsibilities. To be a member of the Jihadi Council, this is the highest (post), and to be the leader of the Radwan Forces is also very privileged,” Magnier was quoted as saying by the agency.
The US had announced a reward of up to $7 million for information leading to Aqil’s “identification, location, arrest, and/or conviction”. He was also under US sanctions.
In 2015, the US Treasury Department designated him as a “terrorist” , followed by another designation by the State Department as a “global terrorist.”
Mohannad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center think tank who researches Hezbollah, described Aqil as an “old school” military commander who was close to the Iranians.
He received three years of officer training in Iran and participated in all the wars in Lebanon and Syria.
