Ibrahim Aqil, a senior Hezbollah operations commander, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Friday. Aqil, who had a $7 million bounty on his head, was wanted for his involvement in two 1983 Beirut truck bombings that resulted in the deaths of over 300 people at the American embassy and a US Marine barracks.
Two Lebanese security sources confirmed that Aqil was killed during a meeting of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Aqil, also known by the aliases Tahsin and Abdelqader, was the second member of Hezbollah’s top military body, the Jihad Council, to be killed in Israeli airstrikes in recent months. In July, a similar strike killed Fuad Shukr in the same area.
Israel has escalated its attacks on Hezbollah following months of border skirmishes, intensified by the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, which began on October 7.
Aqil, a veteran of Hezbollah and a founding member of the group, was born around 1960 in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley. He initially joined the Lebanese Shi’ite political movement Amal before switching to Hezbollah, which was established by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in the early 1980s to resist Israeli occupation of Lebanon.
The United States accused Aqil of playing a role in the 1983 bombings at the American embassy, which killed 63 people, and a subsequent bombing at a US Marine barracks that claimed 241 lives. In addition to these charges, Aqil was accused of directing the abduction of American and German hostages in Lebanon during the 1980s. In 2019, he was listed by the United States as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, resulting in the $7 million bounty.
Hezbollah’s leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, claimed in a 2022 interview that the attacks on Western interests in Lebanon during the 1980s were carried out by small groups unaffiliated with Hezbollah. However, Aqil and his cohort of founding members were instrumental in transforming Hezbollah from a militia into Lebanon’s most powerful military and political organization. They played a key role in driving Israeli forces out of southern Lebanon in 2000 and engaged in subsequent conflicts, including the 2006 war with Israel.
The recent killing of Aqil is viewed as a significant blow to Hezbollah’s command structure, similar to the July death of Fuad Shukr and the 2008 assassination of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh, who was revered by the group but regarded by Israel and the United States as a notorious terrorist.
With Aqil’s bounty exceeding that of Shukr’s, his death is expected to have a profound impact on Hezbollah’s operational capabilities.
