Terrorist mastermind behind embassy bomb is killed in Israeli strike
by Padraic Flanagan · Mail OnlineThe head of Hezbollah’s special forces and 15 other terror commanders were killed in an Israeli air strike on Beirut said to have left 37 dead, including three children.
The US greeted confirmation of the death of Ibrahim Aqil by saying that ‘nobody sheds a tear’ for the terror group’s second-in-command and leader of its Radwan special forces.
Hezbollah retaliated yesterday by firing up to 100 rockets into Israeli territory. The Iran-backed organisation also named another senior commander among the victims of Friday’s attack. Ahmed Mahmud Wahbi had led operations against Israel from the onset of the Gaza war last October until the start of this year.
The air strike has ‘almost completely dismantled’ the group’s military chain of command, the Israeli army claimed last night. It released a stark graphic showing how this year it has killed six of Hezbollah’s eight most senior commanders.
The terror group identified a total of 16 senior commanders who were killed in Friday’s strike,
while Lebanon’s health ministry said the death toll had risen to 37 people, including seven women and three children.
Israeli fighter jets targeted a multi-storey building in a southern suburb of Beirut, where Aqil was holding a meeting with his senior lieutenants. Two apartment blocks in the heart of Dahiyeh, a densely populated stronghold of Hezbollah, were levelled in the strike.
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A statement by the Israel Defence Forces said Aqil, who was in his early 60s, had died alongside other Radwan commanders during a meeting being held in an underground bunker.
The career terrorist and close confidant of Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, had a £5million bounty on his head for his role in the 1983 bomb attack on the US embassy in Beirut that killed 63.
He was also involved in the twin bombing attacks on the US Marine barracks in Lebanon the same year that killed 241 US personnel and 307 people in total.
Commenting at the Israeli-American Council’s conference in Washington, US Middle East tsar Brett McGurk said: ‘Ibrahim Aqil was responsible for the Beirut embassy bombing 40 years ago, so nobody sheds a tear for him.’
Ahmed Mahmud Wahbi was described as a commander who played major roles within the group for decades and was imprisoned in an Israeli jail in 1984.
Hezbollah said he was one of the field commanders of a 1997 ambush in southern Lebanon that left 12 Israeli troops dead.
The group later announced that replacements Ali Karaki and Talal Hamia will take command of operations after the assassinations of Aqil and Wahbi.
Friday’s strike inflicted another blow on Hezbollah after two days of attacks last week in which pagers and walkie-talkies used by its members exploded.
The attacks were widely believed to have been carried out by Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.