Who is Ibrahim Aqil, the Hezbollah commander targeted by Israel?

BEIRUT - Ibrahim Aqil, the Hezbollah commander targeted by Israel on Sept 20 in Beirut, is one of the Iran-backed Lebanese armed group’s most senior leaders.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said

at least 14 people were killed and dozens injured in the strike,

though it was not immediately clear if he was among them. Hezbollah did not comment on the attack.

Believed to be in his 60s, he had survived multiple assassination attempts, and the United States had offered a multimillion-dollar bounty for his capture.

A member of Hezbollah more or less since its establishment in the 1980s, Aqil served on the group’s highest military body, the Jihad Council. Over the past two decades, Israel has slowly killed many of the Jihad Council’s members, who are some of the closest advisers to Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

US officials wanted Aqil for his role in two bombing attacks in 1983 that killed more than 350 people at the US Embassy in Beirut and the US Marine Corps barracks, many of them US citizens, according to the State Department.

In 2023, the State Department posted a reward of up to US$7 million (S$9 million) for information leading to his identification, location, arrest or conviction. It said Aqil also directed the abduction of American and German hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesperson, described Aqil as the chief of Hezbollah’s military operations directorate and the de facto commander of the Radwan force, an elite commando unit. He was responsible for overseeing Hezbollah’s anti-tank missile units and air defence operations, among other roles, Mr Hagari said.

“Aqil had large amounts of blood on his hands,” he told reporters at a news conference. “He was responsible for the deaths of many civilians and innocents.”

Aqil helped plan a never-carried-out Hezbollah invasion of northern Israel similar to that of the Hamas-led assault of southern Israel on Oct 7, Mr Hagari said.

Israeli officials have long warned that Hezbollah hoped to one day send its highly trained fighters across the border, conquering Israeli towns and seizing hostages in a bloody blow to their foes.

In 2019, Nasrallah confirmed that the group had operational plans for entering northern Israel in the event of a war but declined to give details. The Israeli military says it has uncovered multiple cross-border tunnels intended to facilitate such an attack.

Israel assassinated another member of Hezbollah’s Jihad Council, Fouad Shukur, in late July, in another airstrike on a building in Dahiya, a southern suburb of Beirut. Former US officials called Shukur, like Aqil, one of Hezbollah’s most senior military leaders and a confidant of Nasrallah.

Mr Assaf Orion, a retired Israeli brigadier general, said on Sept 20 that Aqil was effectively the top operations officer in Hezbollah’s military apparatus, one who was involved in “numerous” attacks against Israelis.

“He’s an extremely seasoned operations veteran,” said Orion, a former Israeli military liaison to the international peacekeeping mission along the Lebanese-Israeli border.

Israel had tried to assassinate Akil numerous times in the past, but each time he managed to escape with his life, Orion said.

In 2000, Israeli helicopters fired on Aqil’s car in an attempt to avenge the killing of a Lebanese militia leader aligned with Israel, but he survived with only slight injuries. Five civilians were also lightly wounded, including an infant. NYTIMES