Hezbollah Confirms Its Commander Killed in Israeli Airstrike on Beirut

Hezbollah on Wednesday confirmed that one of its most senior military commanders, Fuah Shukr, was killed by an Israeli airstrike that hit a residential building in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Tuesday.

Lebanese sources told Reuters that Shukr’s body was found in the rubble on Wednesday evening, and at least two women and two children were also killed in the strike.

Shukr, also known as Hajj Mohsen, was a founding member of Hezbollah. According to Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen, he was one of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah’s closest advisors.

Hezbollah said that Nasrallah would respond to the Israeli attack in a speech at Shukr’s funeral on Thursday. “As for our political stance on this sinful aggression and great crime, it will be expressed by Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah tomorrow in the martyred leader’s funeral procession,” the Lebanese group said.

Israel said it targeted Shukr in response to the rocket that killed 12 Druze children in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Hezbollah denied responsibility for the strike and blamed it on an Israeli air defense rocket.

Druze residents of the Golan Heights, who mostly consider themselves Syrian, rejected the idea of retaliation for the killing of the 12 children. “Based on our Arab, Islamic, monotheistic beliefs, we reject that a single drop of blood be shed in the name of revenge for our children,” said the Religious and Temporal Commission in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, according to Middle East Eye.