Who is Faud Shukr? The Hezbollah 'senior terrorist' Israel claims to have 'eliminated' in Beirut

Israel on Tuesday (Jul 30) announced that it has "eliminated" Faud Shukr, an elusive Hezbollah military commander. Accusing Shukr of being behind the rocket strike on the annexed Golan strike, Israel said the military commander was killed using fighter jets in the Beirut area.

Earlier, reports suggested that while there were casualties due to the Israeli fighter jet attack, Faud Shukr had escaped. However, the Israeli military in a statement said, "Israeli air force fighter jets eliminated the Hezbollah terrorist organisation's most senior military commander and the head of its strategic unit, Fuad Shukr, in the area of Beirut."

Faud Shukr, as per an AFP report citing an anonymous source close to Hezbollah, was the successor of the group's top commander Imad Mughniyeh — killed in a 2008 car bombing in Damascus that the Iran-backed group blames Israel for.

A shadowy figure, Shukr went by the nom de guerre Hajj Mohsen Shukr, and "commands military operations in southern Lebanon".

He is wanted in the US for playing "a central role" in the deadly 1983 bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut.

In 2017, describing him as "a senior adviser" to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, the US Treasury offered a $5 million bounty for information on Shukr's whereabouts.

As per Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, he was a "senior terrorist who has the blood of Israelis and many others on his hands".

In a video statement, Hagari blamed Shukr for the "Majdal Shams massacre," the Saturday (July 27) attack on Golan Heights that claimed the lives of a dozen children.

"Fuad Shukr was the commander responsible for the Majdal Shams massacre, in which 12 children were murdered after Hezbollah fired an Iranian Falaq-1 rocket directly at a soccer field in northern Israel on Saturday evening," said Hagari.

He also claimed that the slain Hezbollah commander was the "right-hand man to Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader, and his adviser in planning and directing attacks and operations."

The Israeli military alleged that Faud Shukr was behind most of the militant group's advanced weaponry. This, it said, includes precise-guided missiles, cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, long-range rockets and UAVs.

Allegedly, he was also "directly involved" in the abduction of the bodies of three Israeli soldiers — Benyamin Avraham, Adi Avitan and Omar Sawaid. In the 1990s, the Israeli soldiers were killed by Hezbollah while patrolling the security fence adjacent to Har Dov, it added.

"Since then, he has planned and directed numerous terror attacks against innocent civilians," it said, as quoted by AFP.