On July 30, top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr was on the second floor of a residential building in Beirut when he received a call around 7 p.m. The unknown caller wanted him to go to the seventh floor of the building, a report said.
Shukr, who led a very secretive life, did not 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 report in the Wall Street Journal, citing a Hezbollah official.
The militant leader died in the same building where he lived and worked in the southern Beirut district of Dahiyeh, where he had chosen to live to avoid having to move around. His life was so mysterious that he was called the “Ghost” because few knew his name or face before he was killed in the airstrike.
Following his death, Iran and Hezbollah are investigating the call that took him to the seventh floor, allowing Israel to easily attack him. They believe the call likely came from someone who had infiltrated Hezbollah’s internal communications network. Hezbollah’s initial assessment is that Israel had superior technology and hacking capabilities that overcame their counter-surveillance system.
Hours before his death, Shukr had spoken to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, which Nasrallah himself said in his eulogy for Shukr.
Who is Fuad Shukr?
Shukr, who joined Hezbollah 30 years ago, helped organize the 1983 attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. soldiers. There was a $5 million bounty on his head.
Two years later, he rose to prominence when he planned to hijack a plane to free 700 prisoners from Israeli jails. The incident occurred on June 14, 1985, when a group of hijackers hijacked TWA Flight 847 after takeoff from Athens. The plane flew back and forth between Beirut and Algiers for three days. Since then, he has been in hiding.
However, Israel had planned Shukr’s assassination after it accused him of masterminding the rocket attack that killed 12 children playing soccer in Majdal Shams in the occupied Golan Heights. Hezbollah had denied any responsibility for the attack.
