Israel uses hackers to eliminate Hezbollah commander

Hezbollah Commander Fuad Shukr known as “Ghost” had eluded the US for four decades, ever since a bombing killed 241 American servicemen in a Marine barracks in the Lebanese capital, which it says he helped plan.

At the end of July, an Israeli airstrike found him on the seventh floor of a residential building not far away, Caliber.Az reports citing the foreign media.

“These targeted killings have a cumulative effect on the operational capability of the organisation,” said Carmit Valensi, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv and expert on Hezbollah, referring to the Lebanese group.

“He was a source of knowledge,” she said of Shukr. “He knew how to work and communicate with Nasrallah. They spoke the same language.” Shukr lived nearly his entire adult life at the heart of Hezbollah’s operations and decisionmaking and was a key link between the group and its main benefactor, Iran. In 1982, still in his early 20s, he helped organize Shiite guerrilla fighters in Beirut to oppose Israel’s invasion of Lebanon during its civil war.

According to reports, Shukr was killed in Beirut on July 30 when he was in his office on the second floor of a residential building. His apartment was located on the seventh floor of the same building, a strategic choice to minimise his need to appear on the street.

In the evening, an unknown man contacted Shukr via Hezbollah's internal network and asked him to come to the apartment. Shukr was lured to an apartment five floors above his own to facilitate the attack on the building. When Shukr entered the apartment, Israeli forces opened fire on it. Besides Shukr, his wife, two other women, and two children were also killed.