Israel-Lebanon War: What Triggered Missile Exchange As Hezbollah Sets Out To Avenge Commander Fuad Shukr's Killing

Israel-Lebanon War: Hezbollah stated on Sunday that it has completed the "first phase" of its response to Israel's assassination of the group's senior commander Fuad Shukr in an air strike in Lebanon’s Beirut last month. The Lebanese armed group further stated that it had hit 11 Israeli military sites, fired more than 320 rockets and sent drones flying into northern Israel on Sunday.

The Middle-East tensions soared on Sunday after Hezbollah announced large-scale military operations against Israel. Several explosives drones were launched to target the key Israeli military establishments, the Iran-backed group said in a statement. Reports also suggested that hundreds of rockets were also fired towards Israel from Hezbollah-controlled territory.

The killing of Hezbollah’s commander came last month, on July 30, hours before the assassination of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Iran, for which the Palestinian group has blamed Israel. Hezbollah confirmed Shukr’s death in the air strike a day after Israel claimed it had killed the Hezbollah leader.

Who Was Fuad Shukr, A Prominent Target By Israel

Fuad Shukr, also known as al-Hajj Mohsen, was born in Nabatieh in Baalbek in eastern Lebanon. “Shukr was one of a number of veteran Hezbollah officials who were among the founders of the group’s military wing,” said Nicholas Blanford, an expert on Hezbollah with the Atlantic Council think-tank.

“They’ve always lived in the shadows,” he said of the group’s military leaders. Nevertheless, Israeli military officials described Shukr as a close adviser of Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, and a man responsible for obtaining the bulk of the group’s more advanced weapons, “including precise-guided missiles, cruise missiles, antiship missiles, long-range rockets, and UAVs”.

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Fuad Shukr’s History With Hezbollah

He was among Hezbollah’s founders after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Shukr maintained his role within the group throughout the 1980s, with the United States accusing him of overseeing the bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in 1983 when he was in his early 20s.

As per Israeli Military, Shukr oversaw numerous attacks against the Israeli military and its former ally, the South Lebanon Army (SLA) during the following decade.

Shukr was a prominent friend of Hezbollah’s former military commander Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated by Israel in Damascus in 2008, after which Shukr’s prominence within the group rose, Hezbollah said.

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Why Did Israel Target Fuad Shukr?

As per the Israeli military planners, Shukr had been responsible for the missile strike that killed 12 children playing football in Majdal Shams in the occupied Golan Heights. However, Hezbollah, for its part, denied responsibility for the strike.

The strike proved to be a flashpoint within Israeli politics when a delegation of Israeli ministers attempting to visit the funerals of some of the killed children — after ignoring a request not to do so— were assaulted verbally by villagers mourning the loss of the children.