On July 30, Top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr was on the second floor of a residential building in Beirut building when he got a phone call around 7 pm. The unknown caller wanted him to go to the seventh floor of the building, according to a report.
Shukr, who led a very secretive life, didn’t hesitate. He rushed to the seventh floor of the building, where death awaited him. An Israeli airstrike took Shukr along with his wife, two other women, and two children, said a Wall Street Journal report quoting a Hezbollah official.
The militant leader’s death came in the same building where he lived and worked in the southern Beirut neighbourhood of Dahiyeh. He chose to reside there to avoid moving around. So secretive was his life that he was called the ‘ghost’, for few knew his name or face before the airstrike killed him.
After his death, Iran and Hezbollah are probing the phone call which took him to the seventh floor, thereby making it easy for Israel to strike him. They believe the call likely came from an individual who had infiltrated Hezbollah’s internal communications network. The Hezbollah’s initial assessment is that Israel had superior technology and hacking skills that overcame its countersurveillance system.
Hours before his death, Shukr had spoken to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, which Nasrallah himself said in his eulogy to Shukr.
Who is Fuad Shukr?
Shukr, who joined Hezbollah 30 years ago, was involved in orchestrating the 1983 attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American soldiers. He had a bounty of $5 million bounty on his head.
He gained notoriety two years later for planning the hijacking of a plane in to release 700 prisoners in Israeli prisons. The incident happened on June 14, 1985, when a group of hijackers seized TWA Flight 847 after takeoff from Athens. The plane flew back and forth between Beirut and Algiers for three days. He had since then been in hiding.
However, Israel planned Shukr’s murder after alleging that he was the mastermind behind the missile strike that killed 12 children playing football in Majdal Shams in the occupied Golan Heights. Hezbollah had denied responsibility for the strike.
