BEIRUT: Ibrahim Aqil, the Hezbollah operations commander killed in an Israeli strike on Friday (Sep 20), had a US$7 million bounty on his head for 2 1983 Beirut truck bombings that killed greater than 300 folks on the American embassy and a US Marines barracks.
Two safety sources in Lebanon confirmed the veteran fighter was killed in an airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs throughout a gathering of the elite Radwan unit of the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group.
Aqil, who has additionally used the aliases Tahsin and Abdelqader, was the second member of Hezbollah’s prime army physique, the Jihad Council, to be killed in two months after an Israeli strike in the identical space focused Fuad Shukr in July.
Israel escalated its assaults on the group this week after months of border combating triggered by the battle in Gaza that started on Oct 7 with a lethal raid and hostage-taking in Israel by Hezbollah’s Palestinian ally Hamas.
Like Shukr, Aqil is a veteran of Hezbollah, which was based by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards within the early Nineteen Eighties to battle Israeli forces that had invaded and occupied Lebanon.
Born in a village in Lebanon’s Beqaa valley someday round 1960, Aqil had joined the opposite massive Lebanese Shi’ite political motion, Amal, earlier than switching to Hezbollah as a founding member, in keeping with a safety supply.