A phone call drew Hezbollah chief Fuad Shukr to the rooftop of the Beirut building where he was minutes before he was killed by an Israeli airstrike last month, a Hezbollah official said.
Shukr, who was responsible for the massacre of 241 American and 58 French soldiers in a bomb attack in Beirut in 1983, was killed on July 30 along with his wife, two other women and two children. 80 people were also wounded in the attack, which was blamed on the IDF.
The Wall Street Journal revealed that Shukr received a call from someone who told him to go from the second floor of the building he was in to his apartment on the seventh floor.
A Hezbollah official told the paper it was easier to attack him on the upper floor.
The official added that the call likely came from someone who had breached the terror group’s communications network, adding that Israeli intelligence had likely overcome its counter-surveillance measures through better technology and hacking capabilities.
Shukr, long known as the “Phantom” because he was rarely seen in public, is believed to have first gone into hiding after helping plan the hijacking of a TWA flight from Athens to the United States in 1985.
A phone call drew Hezbollah chief Fuad Shukr (pictured) to the top of the Beirut building he was standing in minutes before he was killed by an Israeli airstrike last month.
Shukr was killed on July 30 by an Israeli airstrike at his home in Beirut, Lebanon.
Four civilians were killed and 80 others were injured.
The terror threat, an attempt to pressure the United States and Israel to release hundreds of Lebanese prisoners from Israeli jails, led two terrorists to beat a US Navy diver, Robert Stethem, before shooting him in the head and throwing him out of the plane onto the runway at Beirut airport.
He was also accused of helping plan a bombing of a Beirut barracks that killed 241 American and 58 French soldiers in 1982.
During the attack on the barracks, the suicide bombers drove two trucks filled with the equivalent of six tons of TNT into the military installation.
According to an FBI investigation into the incident, the explosion was so powerful that the building itself was torn from its foundations.
Investigators said the blast was the largest non-nuclear explosion they had ever seen.
He also helped lead a Hezbollah assault in 2006, in which eight Israeli soldiers were killed and two were kidnapped.
The late Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani, left, stands next to Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, right, posing for a photo with Fuad Shukr
A picture taken on July 30, 2024 shows rescuers on the street near a building with its upper floors destroyed following an Israeli military strike in the southern suburb of Beirut.
The Israeli military said it carried out a strike on July 30 in Beirut that targeted a Hezbollah commander responsible for the killing of children in last week’s rocket attack in the Golan Heights.
Before his death, he was a major player in the world of arms smuggling, according to the Israel Defense Forces, and was responsible for arming Hezbollah to the teeth.
It expanded the terrorist group’s rocket arsenal from 15,000 to 150,000, making it the best-armed non-state actor in the Middle East.
The IDF said he was a key player in smuggling Iranian missile components that were adapted to unguided missiles, turning them into precision weapons.
His continued presence in the world of terror was largely due to his secrecy. At the time of his death, many media outlets showed images of the wrong man.
He was last seen in public in early 2024, when he was seen outdoors for a few minutes to attend the funeral of his nephew, who died while fighting Israeli troops.
Shukr’s death came hours before Israel killed Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in an explosion in Tehran, Iran’s capital.
Cross-border violence has killed some 584 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters but including at least 128 civilians.
The Wall Street Journal revealed that Shukr received a call from someone who told him to go from the second floor of the building he was in to his apartment on the seventh floor.
Although Israel has yet to officially confirm or deny involvement in their deaths, Hezbollah and Iran, which have close ties, have vowed revenge.
Since then, Hezbollah itself has engaged in further skirmishes with Israel on Lebanon’s southern border.
Today, the terror group said two of its fighters were killed and claimed it attacked northern Israel.
Hezbollah said two of its fighters were “martyred on the road to Jerusalem,” the phrase it uses to refer to members killed by Israeli fire since October.
The Israeli military said air forces struck “Hezbollah terrorists” in the Houla area and “Hezbollah military structures” elsewhere in southern Lebanon.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) reported Israeli bombings and strikes in several areas in the south, saying “enemy warplanes broke the sound barrier twice over Beirut and its suburbs… at low altitude.”
Hezbollah said it had launched a “simultaneous airstrike” using “explosive-laden drones” against two Israeli military positions: the Yaara barracks near the border and a base near the coastal city of Acre, about 15 kilometers (10 miles) from the border.
The Israeli military said in a statement that “multiple suspicious aerial targets were identified crossing from Lebanon.”
Air defences “intercepted some of the targets and others fell” in the Yaara area, the statement added.
Cross-border violence has killed some 584 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters but including at least 128 civilians.
On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, 22 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed, according to army figures.