Israel targets Hezbollah commander in Beirut it blames for weekend attack that killed 12
By VOA News July 30, 2024
The Israeli military said Tuesday evening that it carried out an attack in Beirut targeting the Hezbollah commander it claimed was responsible for the airstrike that killed 12 children and teenagers playing on a football field over the weekend in the Golan Heights.
A loud blast could be heard and a plume of smoke could be seen rising above Beirut's southern suburbs, a stronghold of the Iranian-funded Hezbollah militants. A Hezbollah official said several buildings were damaged and authorities said two people were killed.
Media reports in the Mideast identified the Hezbollah commander as Fuad Shukr, but his fate was not definitively known.
The Saudi news source Al-Hadath reported that Shukr survived. But the Israeli news site ynet quoted an Israeli security source as saying, "There is a very high probability that the Hezbollah official was eliminated. If he was in the building - he is no longer with us."
Shukr was believed to be Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's military adviser and has long been active in the U.S.-designated terrorist organization. He was the head of the militant group's operations room.
The United States sanctioned him in 2015 and he was wanted by the U.S. for his alleged role in the 1983 bombing of U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut.
The Hezbollah official had a $5 million bounty "on his head," according to the United States Rewards for Justice, a State Department group that seeks to find wanted terrorists.
The Lebanese state-run national news agency said the Israeli strike had targeted the area near Hezbollah's Shura Council in the Haret Hreik neighborhood of the capital.
Israel and the United States have blamed Hezbollah for the Saturday attack on the Druze village of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, although Hezbollah has denied responsibility.
Earlier, Israel's military said it used airstrikes and artillery fire to attack Hezbollah targets in seven areas in southern Lebanon, even as U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin expressed concern that clashes between Israel and Hezbollah could spiral into a wider regional conflict along with the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
"While we've seen a lot of activity on Israel's northern border, we remain concerned about the potential of this escalating into a full-blown fight," Austin told reporters Tuesday during a visit to the Philippines.
"We would like to see things resolved in a diplomatic fashion," Austin said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Monday to carry out a strong response to the deadly rocket attack on the Golan Heights and reiterated Israel's accusation that Hezbollah was responsible.
"These children are our children, they are the children of all of us," Netanyahu said during a visit to the attack site. "The state of Israel will not and cannot overlook this. Our response will come, and it will be severe."
His visit was not entirely embraced, with several hundred family members of the victims and community members protesting that Netanyahu was exploiting the situation for political gain.
Israel and Hezbollah have traded attacks across the border since the start of the war in Gaza last October. Hezbollah has said it is acting in solidarity with Hamas, the same motivation cited by the Yemen-based Houthi militants who have spent months disrupting the key Red Sea shipping route with attacks on vessels. All three groups are backed by Iran.
Jonathan Ruhe, director of foreign policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, told VOA that the potential for escalation between Israel and Hezbollah is the highest it has been since the Gaza war started.
"I think both sides had agreed to some unspoken rules of the game, as they say, in which the attacks would continue, but both sides implicitly recognized sort-of thresholds which they would not attack on the other side," Ruhe said. "I think Israel finds itself between a rock and a hard place because it feels compunction to change those rules of the game to convince Hezbollah that attacks like what happened on Saturday can no longer continue."
The United Nations and others have been working in recent days to try to reduce the tensions.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday that the United States was "confident" about the prospect of avoiding a wider war.
Nimrod Goren, senior fellow for Israeli Affairs at the Middle East Institute, told VOA that prior efforts to de-escalate the Israel-Hezbollah situation were linked to the push to achieve a cease-fire in Gaza.
But the cease-fire talks have stretched on for months without achieving an agreement.
"There is a need for another sort-of off ramp between Israel and Hezbollah because the current situation, as we see happening, could not last for a longer time," Goren said. "The price on both sides is becoming very significant."
The war in Gaza began with the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel in which the militants killed 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages.
Israel's military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 39,300 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in Gaza. Israel says it has also killed thousands of Hamas fighters.
Some information for this story was provided by The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
