On July 30, 2024, Israel killed Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in an airstrike on the seventh floor of a Beirut apartment building, not far from the site of the bombing he planned that killed 241 US Marines in 1983.

How did Shukr, with a $5 million bounty on his head, elude the US for almost four decades? According to a Wall Street Journal report, Shukr was a “ghost” – living an almost invisible life and rarely appearing in public. He was so secretive that Lebanese media outlets reporting on his death initially published photos of the wrong person.

Shukr’s last day was spent at his office on the second floor of a residential apartment building in the neighborhood of Dahiyeh in southern Beirut. Per his secretive life, his residence was on the seventh floor of the same building, eliminating the need for him to leave his building to go to his office.

According to a Hezbollah official, Shukr received a phone call that evening telling him to go up to his apartment. Shortly later, at 7 p.m., an Israeli airstrike destroyed his home, killing the shadowy figure.

The official said that the phone call luring Shukr to his death likely came from an outside party who had somehow breached Hezbollah’s internal communications network.

Shukr became Hezbollah’s first military commander after the terror group’s formation in 1985. Shortly after helping plan the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in June 1985, he went underground and “became invisible.”

He came into Israel’s crosshairs after Hezbollah killed 12 children in a rocket attack on Majdal Shams in northern Israel on July 27.

“We’d heard his name, but we never saw him,” said a young neighbor who sat on the pavement near the building where Shukr was killed. “He was like a ghost.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)