By BASSEM MROUE and KAREEM CHEHAYEB
BEIRUT (AP) — The Hezbollah commander who the Israeli military says it killed in an airstrike Tuesday had been blamed by Israel for a deadly weekend rocket attack and was accused by the U.S. of orchestrating the 1983 bombing in Beirut that killed 241 American servicemen.
A statement from Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the target of the strike, Fouad Shukur, was behind the Saturday rocket attack on the town of Majdal Shams that killed 12 young people in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights of Syria.
Hezbollah, which denied it was behind the Majdal Shams attack, didn’t confirm that Shukur was the target of Tuesday’s airstrike or that he was killed.
If Israel’s claim proves true, Shukur would be the most senior Hezbollah commander to be killed since 2016, when Mustafa Badreddine, the group’s military commander in Syria, died in an explosion in the Syrian capital of Damascus.
The Israeli military said that Shukur had directed Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel since Oct. 8, after the Israel-Hamas war erupted, and that he was also involved in “the killing of numerous Israelis and foreign nationals over the years.”
It said Shukur was responsible for the majority of Hezbollah’s most advanced weaponry, including guided missiles, cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, long-range rockets and UAVs.
The 62-year-old, secretive Shukur was in charge of Hezbollah’s forces in southern Lebanon along the border with Israel as well as being a top official in the group’s missile program.
He had been a close aide to Hezbollah’s top military chief, Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated in 2008 by a car bomb in Damascus. Shukur had since been a close military adviser to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Like most of Hezbollah’s military officials, little is known about Shukur, who was also known as Sayed Mohsen. The U.S. Treasury Department had offered a $5 million reward for information about him.
He joined Hezbollah when the group was founded following the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon that forced the Palestine Liberation Organization to leave Lebanon.
Shukur, who was a member of Hezbollah’s Jihadi Council, the group’s top military body, was accused by the United States of planning and staging the truck bombing of a Marine Corps barracks in Beirut that killed 241 American service members.
The bombing near the Beirut International Airport on Oct. 23, 1983, remains the deadliest single-day attack on Marines since the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. A near-simultaneous attack on French forces killed 58 paratroopers.
The U.S. Treasury Department listed Shukur as a “specially designated national” on July 21, 2015, for acting for or on behalf of Hezbollah.
Like most Hezbollah military officials, Shukur played a role during Syria’s conflict that broke out in 2011 in which the Iran-backed Hezbollah sent thousands of fighters to join President Bashar Assad’s Syrian forces, helping tip the balance in his favor.
After the Israel-Hamas war broke out Oct. 7, Shukur was accused by Israel of being behind many of the drone and missile attacks that Hezbollah carried out against Israel.
In the thousands of rockets it has fired since October, Hezbollah has insisted it targets military and intelligence installations. Still, Hezbollah rockets have hit civilian areas. Before Saturday’s bloodshed, its strikes had killed 13 civilians and 22 soldiers in Israel. In Lebanon. Israel’s attacks have killed more than 500 people, including 90 civilians.
