Who was Ibrahim Aqil? Top Hezbollah commander 'killed' by Israel

Ibrahim Aqil. (Photo/Reuters)

Ibrahim Aqil, the Hezbollah operations commander reportedly killed in an Israeli strike, had a $7 million bounty on his head for two 1983 Beirut truck bombings that killed more than 300 people at the American embassy and a US Marines barracks.

Two security sources in Lebanon confirmed the veteran fighter was killed in a strike on Beirut's southern suburbs during a meeting of the Radwan unit of the Iranian-backed group on Friday.

Like most of Hezbollah's military leadership, little was known about Aqil, whom group members knew only by his nom de guerre Abdelqader.

But here is what we know:

Aqil, who has also used the alias Tahsin, headed Hezbollah's Radwan unit.

The Radwan is Hezbollah's most formidable offensive force and its fighters are trained in cross-border infiltration, according to media.

This specialist unit includes experienced fighters, some of whom have fought outside Lebanon including in Syria, where Hezbollah has openly backed the forces of President Bashar al Assad since 2013.

The US Treasury said Aqil "played a vital role" in the group's campaign in Syria.

Aqil was the second member of Hezbollah's top armed wing, the Jihad Council, to be killed in two months after an Israeli strike in the same area targeted Fuad Shukr in July.

Israel has repeatedly demanded through international mediators that Radwan Force fighters, who spearhead the group's operations on the ground, be pushed away from the border, Lebanese officials have told the media.

Like Shukr, Aqil is a veteran of Hezbollah, which was founded by Iran's Revolutionary Guard in the early 1980s to battle Israeli forces that had invaded and occupied Lebanon.

Born in a village in Lebanon's Beqaa valley sometime around 1960, Aqil had joined the other big Lebanese Shia political movement, Amal, before switching to Hezbollah as a founding member, according to a security source.

$7M bounty

The United States accuses him of a role in the Beirut truck bombings at the American embassy in April 1983, which killed 63 people, and a US Marine barracks six months later that killed 241 people.

It further accused him of directing the abduction of American and German hostages in Lebanon and listed him as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" in 2019, putting the $7 million bounty on his head.

Referring to the bombing of the US Marine barracks and other attacks on Western interests in Lebanon in the 1980s, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a 2022 interview with an Arabic broadcaster that they were carried out by small groups not linked to Hezbollah.

Aqil's cohort of founding Hezbollah operatives helped turn the group into Lebanon's most powerful military and political organisation, pushing Israel from its occupation of the south in 2000 and fighting it again in 2006.

When Shukr was killed in July, it was seen as the heaviest blow to its command structure since the 2008 assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, remembered by Hezbollah as a legendary commander but by Israel and the United States as a terrorist.

Aqil, whose bounty was set by the United States at an even higher value than that of Shukr's, may prove a similar blow.

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Source: TRT