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How Fuad Shukr was killed in Beirut

On the last day of his life, Fuad Shukr was in his office on the second floor of an apartment building in Beirut when he received a call at 7 p.m. that evening ordering him to go to his apartment on the seventh floor, where he was killed shortly afterwards. Wall Street Journal was reported citing a Hezbollah official.

The explosion also killed his wife, two other women and two children, while 70 people were injured, the Lebanese Hezbollah-run Health Ministry said.

The call ordering Shukr to go to the seventh floor of the building likely came from someone who had infiltrated Hezbollah's internal communications network, the WSJ reported, citing the Hezbollah official.

Hezbollah and Iran are still investigating the intelligence lapse, but the official believes it was due to Israel's technology and hacking being better than Hezbollah's counter-surveillance.

Shukr had led a life of secrecy, according to WSJand hardly anyone ever saw him. He lived and worked in the same building in the southern Beirut district of Dahiyeh, so he didn't have to go outside.

A man holds Palestinian, Lebanese and Hezbollah flags next to a damaged site where top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr was killed after an Israeli strike on July 30, as members of the Lebanese parliamentary health committee visit the area in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, August 5, 2024. (Source: REUTERS/ALKIS KONSTANTINIDIS)

Only a few hours before his death he had been in contact with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Nasrallah said in his eulogy for Shukr, the WSJ reported.

Shukr's fame

Shukr rose to prominence when he planned a hijacking in 1985 to free 700 prisoners from Israeli jails. On June 14, 1985, a group of hijackers hijacked TWA Flight 847 after takeoff from Athens and flew the plane back and forth between Beirut and Algiers for three days. After orchestrating this terrorist operation, he went into hiding.

When Hezbollah began attacking Israel again on October 7, Israeli strikes killed about 400 members of the group, including key commanders. In response, Nasrallah called on Hezbollah fighters and their families to “put down their phone, deactivate it, bury it and lock it in a metal box,” he said.

To prevent Israeli espionage, Hezbollah began using encrypted language on open channels and also in its internal communications network, the Hezbollah official told the WSJOn the day he was killed, Hezbollah ordered senior commanders to disperse because they feared they might be in danger, the Hezbollah official said.

After his murder, his neighbor said: “We had heard his name but never seen him. He was like a ghost.”



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