Hezbollah denies report on Israeli assassination of its commander

Shafaq News/ Hezbollah has officially denied a report by the Wall Street Journal detailing the assassination of its military commander, Fouad Shukur, in a recent Israeli airstrike in southern Beirut. The report highlighted Shukur's secretive life and claimed he had evaded capture for decades.

The Wall Street Journal article, published last week, described how Shukru, who was killed in late July, "lived such a secretive life that few people knew his name or face before his death." The article noted that his death "finally brought him out of the shadows."

Tensions in the region have escalated since Shukur's death, with Hezbollah vowing retaliation. Shukur was killed just hours before the assassination of Hamas' political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, which was also attributed to Israel. Tehran has also promised a response to Haniyeh's killing.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Shukur had evaded US capture for four decades, since his alleged involvement in planning the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 US military personnel and injured 128 others.

After years on the run, the Israeli military located Shukur on the seventh floor of a residential building in Beirut. He had been working in Hezbollah's highest military body, the "Jihad Council", and had assisted Hezbollah militants and Syrian regime forces in their military campaign against Syrian opposition forces, according to the US State Department's "Rewards for Justice" program, which had offered $5 million for information leading to his capture.

Despite being a key figure in Hezbollah's history, Shukur led an almost invisible life, appearing only at small gatherings of trusted veteran fighters, according to the Wall Street Journal. He had made a rare public appearance earlier this year at his nephew's funeral but only for a few minutes.

Shukur was so secretive that Lebanese media, which reported his death, mistakenly published photos of another man. A Hezbollah official stated that Shukr, known to only a few, spent his last day, July 30, in his office on the second floor of a residential building in southern Beirut.

While his office was on the second floor, he lived on the seventh floor of the same building, reducing his need to move outside. On the evening of July 30, according to a Hezbollah official, Shukur received a call requesting him to go to his apartment on the seventh floor. Around 7 p.m., Israeli ordnance struck the apartment and three floors below, killing Shukur, his wife, two other women, and two children, while injuring more than 70 people, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health.

The call was likely made by someone who had infiltrated Hezbollah's internal communications network, intending to lure Shukur to a higher floor for easier targeting amidst surrounding buildings, the official added. Hezbollah and Iran continue to investigate the intelligence failure, believing Israel used superior technology to overcome Hezbollah's surveillance operations.

The Wall Street Journal also detailed Shukur's life of secrecy since his early 20s, when he participated in guerrilla wars before becoming a Hezbollah leader after its founding. According to Qasim Qasir, a political analyst familiar with Hezbollah, Shukur went underground shortly after planning the hijacking of a TWA flight in June 1985.

Qasir stated that the secretive life took its toll on Shukur, who compensated for the lack of social contact by being attentive to those he trusted. "He was fiercely loyal to a close circle of friends, many of whom he grew up with, including Seyyid Hassan Nasrallah, who became Hezbollah's leader in 1992," Qasir said.

However, Qasir noted that Shukur seemed more relaxed in recent years as targeted killings occurred in Damascus rather than Beirut. "Rules of engagement with Israel were established, with red lines in place," Qasir added.

These rules remained until October 7, when Nasrallah ordered his militants and their families to stop using smartphones to prevent Israeli eavesdropping. Hezbollah resorted to using encrypted language, according to a Hezbollah official.

Shukr became a focus for Israel after a rocket attack in Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights in late July, which Israel attributed to Hezbollah, although the group denied involvement.

The official said Hezbollah issued orders early on the day Shukur was targeted for senior leaders to disperse amid concerns for their safety. After the strike, it was not immediately clear if Shukur had been killed. Some in Hezbollah believed he might have responded to evacuation orders and escaped the building. It took some time to locate his body.

A young neighbor sitting on the pavement near the building where Shukur was killed said, "We heard his name, but we never saw him. He was like a ghost."

In a statement released on Sunday, Hezbollah’s media relations office categorically denied the Wall Street Journal report, calling it a "fabricated narrative." The statement read, "Hezbollah's media relations office categorically denies the fabricated narrative presented by the Wall Street Journal regarding the martyrdom of Jihad Commander Fuad Shukur. The story is filled with lies and has no basis in reality."

The statement added, "None of the three journalists who authored the article ever met with any Hezbollah officials."

The statement concluded, "This false narrative, and the supposed sources attributed to it, are purely the creation of its authors’ imaginations and serve only to promote and advertise for the Zionist enemy. This is what the aforementioned newspaper and several Lebanese and Arab media outlets that published this false story without verification or review have repeatedly done in service of the Zionist project."

*Disclaimer: The views presented by the author do not necessarily reflect the official standpoint of Shafaq News Agency.