'Urgent' phone call lured Hezbollah leader Fuad Shukr to his death in Beirut strike last month - report

The Wall Street Journal reported that Hezbollah’s second-in-command, Fuad Shukr, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut last month, was lured to return to his apartment by a phone call, where he was killed. 

Shukr had been sought by the United States since the April 1983 U.S. Embassy bombing in Beirut that killed 241 American servicemen and which the U.S. alleges he helped plan.

As one of Hezbollah’s founding members and serving as the right-hand man for Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Shukr had extensive experience in fighting against Israel, as he helped organize groups of Shiite guerrilla fighters against the IDF during the First Lebanon War. 

At the time of his elimination, Shukr was working in his office on the second floor of his apartment building. He had chosen to set up his office there, despite living on the seventh floor, to avoid leaving the building, according to the WSJ report.

Like Nasrallah, Shukr had been living in secrecy to avoid detection by Israeli surveillance. The WSJ reported that his last known public appearance was earlier this year when he briefly attended the funeral of a nephew who had been killed by Israeli forces. In fact, Shukr lived such a secretive life, that in the initial news reports on his death, Lebanese media published the photo of another man. 

Prior to his death, Shukr had been in charge of planning Hezbollah’s increasingly escalating campaign against Israel. 

On the evening of July 30, shortly before his death, Shukr received a phone call telling him to return to his apartment on the seventh floor, an easier target for the Israeli airstrike. 

Shortly after that, an Israeli missile hit the apartment, killing Shukr, his wife, two other women, and two children. According to a Hezbollah official who spoke to the WSJ, the phone call apparently came from someone who compromised Hezbollah's internal communications network. 

Shukr was the highest-level Hezbollah member killed since the start of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah on Oct. 8, when the terror group in Lebanon joined Hamas in targeting Israel. His death is seen as a severe blow to the terror organization, taking out one of its best strategists and exposing a high-level infiltration. 

We eliminated Fuad Shukr. Here’s why: pic.twitter.com/bxQ5WqYfrl

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) July 31, 2024

Carmit Valensi, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said, “These targeted killings have a cumulative effect on the operational capability of the organization.” 

She said that Shukr’s death likely shook Nasrallah.

“He was a source of knowledge,” she said of Shukr. “He knew how to work and communicate with Nasrallah. They spoke the same language.”