The Israel Defense Forces revealed Wednesday four reasons why it killed Fuad Shukr, the Hezbollah commander responsible for a drone strike that left 12 children and teens dead over the weekend in northern Israel.
Shukr served as a senior adviser to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah at the time of his death in an IDF strike on Tuesday in southern Beirut. The IDF says its fighter jets “eliminated the Hezbollah terrorist organization’s most senior military commander [Shukr]” in Lebanon’s capital city.
Here’s why Israel’s military says it took out Shukr:
The IDF says Shukr, who joined Hezbollah in 1985, rose up the ranks of the terrorist group to obtain a position close to its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
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“He planned Hezbollah terrorist attacks for 30 years and has Israeli, American, French and other civilians’ blood on his hands,” the IDF said Wednesday.
The Israeli military added that within Hezbollah, Shukr was its “senior advisor for strategic affairs and wartime operations.”
The IDF alleges that for the past ten months – since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, 2023 – Shukr has been “orchestrating rocket and UAV attacks” against Israelis.
The attacks, they say, have forced “60,000 civilians in northern Israel to evacuate their homes.”
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The Israeli military has been engaged in frequent skirmishes along its northern border with Lebanon.
The IDF says Shukr was the planner for this past weekend’s deadly Hezbollah rocket attack in the northern Israeli village of Majdal Shams.
The scenes there on Sunday were ones of sadness, shock and devastation as the residents of the mostly Druze village buried the young victims of the Hezbollah strike that killed at least 12 and injured some 29 others — mostly ages between 10 and 20 as many of them innocently played soccer on Saturday.
The IDF says Shukr was instrumental in developing precision-guided missiles.
“These missiles have the potential to threaten the lives of millions of Israeli civilians,” it added.
Fox News’ Andrea Vacchiano, Benjamin Weinthal and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
