The IDF said the most prominent target of its airstrike, Ibrahim Aqil, was the head of Hezbollah’s military operations, the acting commander of the terror group’s elite Radwan Force, and was overseeing a planned operation to invade the Galilee.
Aqil was also the most senior military member of the Jihad Council, Hezbollah’s top military body, after Israel’s assassination of Fuad Shukr in a strike in Beirut in July.
Hezbollah released a statement late Friday confirming Aqil’s death, saying “one of its great leaders” was killed “on the road to Jerusalem,” the phrase it uses to refer to fighters killed by Israel.
The statement also said the “great jihadist leader” had “joined the procession of his brothers, the great martyr leaders, after a blessed life full of jihad, work, wounds, sacrifices, dangers, challenges, achievements, and victories.”
Aqil had also been wanted by the United States for his role in the 1983 bombings of the American Embassy in Lebanon and the US Marines barracks in Beirut.
In a curt statement issued on Friday evening, soon after the start of Shabbat, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “Our goals are clear, and our actions speak for themselves.”
Before and after the strike targeting Aqil, Hezbollah fired some 200 rockets Friday at the northern Galilee and the Golan Heights. No casualties were reported following the barrages, which happened as the IDF alerted residents in the area to remain close to bomb shelters.
Alongside Aqil, the top brass of Hezbollah’s operations array and the leadership of the Radwan Force were killed in the strike, according to the military.
“They gathered underground, under a residential building, in the heart of the Dahiyeh, while using civilians as a human shield. They met to coordinate terror activities against Israeli civilians,” IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a press conference.
Hagari said that at least 10 members of Hezbollah’s Radwan Force and operations array were killed in the strike, which Lebanese media reported was carried out by an Israeli F-35 fighter jet using two missiles.
An Axios report quoted an Israeli official saying that some 20 Radwan Force commanders were killed.
According to figures from Lebanon’s health ministry, 14 people were killed and 66 were wounded. The ministry said the strike leveled the apartment building in the Dahiyeh area of south Beirut where Israel said Aqil and the other Hezbollah leaders had been meeting below ground.
The strike inflicted another blow to Hezbollah after the terror group suffered a pair of unprecedented attacks earlier this week in which pagers and walkie-talkies used by its members exploded, killing 37 people and wounding thousands. That attack was widely believed to have also been carried out by Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.
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