A phone call lured Hezbollah chief Fuad Shukr towards the top of the Beirut building he was in minutes before he was assassinated by an Israeli airstrike last month, an official from the terror group has claimed.
Shukr, who was responsible for the 1983 massacre of 241 American and 58 French troops in a Beirut bombing, was killed on July 30, along with his wife, two other women, and two children. 80 people were also injured in the strike, which was attributed to 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 newspaper that he was easier to target on the higher 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 beaten its countersurveillance measures through better technology and hacking capabilities.
Shukr, long known as the ‘Ghost’ because of how rarely he was seen in public, is believed to have first gone into hiding after he helped plan the 1985 hijacking of a TWA flight from Athens to the US.
A phone call lured Hezbollah chief Fuad Shukr (pictured) towards the top of the Beirut building he was in minutes before he was assassinated by an Israeli airstrike last month
Shukr was killed on July 30 by an Israeli airstrike in his home in Beirut, Lebanon
Four civilians were killed, and a further 80 people were injured
The terror threat, an attempt to pressure the US and Israel into releasing hundreds of Lebanese prisoners from Israeli prisons, saw two terrorists beat up an American Navy diver, Robert Stethem, before shooting him in the head and throwing him out of the plane and onto the runway of Beirut Airport.
He was also accused of helping to plan a bombing at a Beirut barracks that killed 241 American and 58 French troops in 1982.
The barracks bombing saw suicide bombers drive two trucks filled with the equivalent of six tonnes of TNT into the military facility.
According to an FBI investigation into the incident, the explosion was so powerful that the building itself was ripped from its foundations.
Investigators said the blast was the largest non-nuclear explosion they had ever seen.
He also helped command a Hezbollah assault in 2006 that killed eight Israeli soldiers, and saw two get kidnapped.
Late Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani, left, standing next to Fuad Shukr, a Hezbollah top commander
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, right, posing for a picture with Fuad Shukr
An photo taken on July 30, 2024, shows rescuers on the street near a building with destroyed top floors following an Israeli military strike on Beirut’s southern suburb
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 on the Golan Heights
Prior to his death, he was a major player in the arms smuggling world, according to the IDF, and was responsible for arming Hezbollah to the teeth.
He expanded the terror group’s rocket arsenal from 15,000 to 150,000, making it the most well-armed non-state actor in the Middle East.
The IDF said he was a key player in smuggling in Iranian missile components that were retrofitted to unguided missiles, turning them into precision weapons.
His longevity in the world of terror was largely attributed to his secretiveness. At the time of his death, many media outlets showed pictures of the wrong man.
The last time he was seen in public was in early 2024, when he was seen out in the open for just a few minutes to attend the funeral of is 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 city.
The 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
While Israel has still not officially confirmed or denied its involvement in their deaths, Hezbollah and Iran, which have close ties, have both vowed to take revenge.
Hezbollah itself has since engaged in more skirmishes with Israel on Lebanon’s southern border.
Today, the terror group said two of its fighters were killed and claimed that it attacked northern Israel.
Hezbollah said two of its fighters were ‘martyred on the road to Jerusalem’, the phrase it has used to refer to members killed by Israeli fire since October.
The Israeli military said air forces struck ‘Hezbollah terrorists’ in the Hula area and ‘Hezbollah military structures’ elsewhere in south Lebanon.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) reported Israeli shelling and raids on several southern areas, and said ‘enemy warplanes broke the sound barrier twice over Beirut and its suburbs… at low altitude’.
Hezbollah said it launched a ‘simultaneous air attack’ with ‘explosive-laden drones’ on two Israeli military positions – the Yaara barracks near the border, and a base near the coastal town of Acre, around 15 kilometres (10 miles) from the frontier.
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.
The 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.