The Hezbollah Commanders Killed in Israeli Strikes

Hezbollah commanders killed in recent strikes. AFP/File
Hezbollah commanders killed in recent strikes. AFP/File
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The Hezbollah Commanders Killed in Israeli Strikes

Hezbollah commanders killed in recent strikes. AFP/File
Hezbollah commanders killed in recent strikes. AFP/File

Israel has killed several top Hezbollah commanders in a series of targeted strikes on the Iran-backed movement's stronghold in Beirut.
Here is what we know about the slain commanders.
Shukr: right-hand man
A strike on July 30 killed Fuad Shukr, the group's top military commander and one of Israel's most high-profile targets.
Shukr, who was in his early 60s, played a key role in cross-border clashes with Israeli forces, according to a source close to Hezbollah.
The two sides have traded near-daily fire across the frontier since Hezbollah ally Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel.
Shukr helped found Hezbollah during Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war and became a key adviser to its chief, Hassan Nasrallah.
Shukr was Hezbollah's most senior military commander, and Nasrallah said he had been in daily contact with him since October.
Israel blamed Shukr for a rocket attack in July on the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights that killed 12 children in a Druze Arab town. Hezbollah has denied responsibility.
In 2017, the US Treasury offered a $5 million reward for information on Shukr, saying he had "a central role" in the deadly 1983 bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut.
Aqil: US bounty
A strike on September 20 killed Ibrahim Aqil, head of Hezbollah's elite Radwan Force, along with 15 other commanders.
According to Lebanese officials, the attack killed a total of 55 people, many of them civilians.
A source close to Hezbollah described Aqil as the second-in-command in the group's forces after Shukr.
The Radwan Force is Hezbollah's most formidable offensive unit and its fighters are trained in cross-border infiltration, a source close to the group told AFP.
The United States said Aqil was a member of Hezbollah's Jihad Council, the movement's highest military body.
The US Treasury said he was a "principal member" of the Islamic Jihad Organization -- a Hezbollah-linked group behind the 1983 bombing of the US embassy in Beirut that killed 63 people and an attack on US Marine Corps in the Lebanese capital the same year that killed 241 American soldiers.
Kobeissi: missiles expert
On September 25, a strike killed Ibrahim Mohammed Kobeissi, who commanded several military units including a guided missiles unit.
"Kobeissi was an important source of knowledge in the field of missiles and had close ties with senior Hezbollah military leaders," the Israeli military said.
Kobeissi joined Hezbollah in 1982 and rose through the ranks of the group's forces.
One of the units he led was tasked with manning operations in part of the south of Lebanon, which borders Israel.
Srur: drone chief
A strike on September 26 killed Mohammed Srur, the head of Hezbollah's drone unit since 2020.
Srur studied mathematics and was among a number of top advisers sent by Hezbollah to Yemen to train the country's Houthi group, who are also backed by Iran, a source close to Hezbollah said.
He had also played a key role in Hezbollah's intervention since 2013 in Syria's civil war in support of President Bashar al-Assad's government.
Hezbollah will hold a funeral ceremony for Srur on Friday.
Other commanders killed in recent strikes include Wissam Tawil and Mohammed Naameh Nasser.



18 Dead in Sudan's El-Fasher after RSF Attack on Market

Internally displaced women wait in a queue to collect aid from a group at a camp in Gadaref on May 12, 2024. (AFP)
Internally displaced women wait in a queue to collect aid from a group at a camp in Gadaref on May 12, 2024. (AFP)
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18 Dead in Sudan's El-Fasher after RSF Attack on Market

Internally displaced women wait in a queue to collect aid from a group at a camp in Gadaref on May 12, 2024. (AFP)
Internally displaced women wait in a queue to collect aid from a group at a camp in Gadaref on May 12, 2024. (AFP)

A Rapid Support Forces' attack on a market in the Sudanese city of El-Fasher killed 18 people, a medical source told AFP on Friday, after world leaders appealed for an end to the country's wartime suffering.

The RSF's shelling of the market on Thursday evening also injured dozens, activists said separately, as RSF and regular army vie for control of the North Darfur state capital, 17 months into their war in the northeast African country.

"We received last night at the hospital 18 dead," some of them burned and others killed with severe shrapnel injuries, a source at El-Fasher Teaching Hospital told AFP, requesting anonymity for their own protection.

The plight of Sudan, and El-Fasher in particular, has been under discussion this week at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

"We must compel the warring parties to accept humanitarian pauses in El-Fasher, Khartoum and other highly vulnerable areas," Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN, said on Wednesday.

The Teaching Hospital is one of the last still receiving patients in El-Fasher, where reports of a "full-scale assault" by RSF on the city last weekend led UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to call for an urgent ceasefire.

The RSF have besieged El-Fasher since May, and famine has already been declared in Zamzam refugee camp near the city of two million.

RSF "artillery shelling continued this morning" on residential neighbourhoods and the market, the local resistance committee said on Friday.

The committee, which reported the dozens of wounded in Thursday's market attack, is one of hundreds of pro-democracy volunteer groups across Sudan that provide crucial aid to civilians caught in the crossfire.

Sudan's war has killed tens of thousands of people. The World Health Organization cited a toll of at least 20,000 but United States envoy Tom Perriello has said some estimates reach 150,000.

US President Joe Biden, who raised particular concern over the assault on El-Fasher, on Tuesday urged all countries to cut off weapons supplies to the country's rival generals, Sudanese Armed Forces chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

"The world needs to stop arming the generals. Speak with one voice and tell them: 'Stop tearing your country apart. Stop blocking aid to the Sudanese people. End this war now,'" Biden told the UN General Assembly.

On the sidelines of the UN talks, Guterres met with Burhan, expressing concern about "escalation" and the risk of "a regional spillover," the UN said.

Both sides have been repeatedly accused of war crimes.