Multiple reports have indicated that the Hezbollah senior leadership assassinated by Israel on Friday were killed during a meeting plotting an attack on northern Israel similar to the October 7 terror massacre conducted by Hamas last year. Ibrahim Aqil, the commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, and former Radwan Force commander Abu Hassan Samir, who was also a planner of the “Conquer the Galilee” attack, were among those killed in the Israeli strike according to the IDF website.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said on Sunday the dead terror leaders weren’t just behind the plans to invade northern Israel—they were plotting it in the very meeting where they were killed. Herzog, in an interview with Sky News republished by Israel, said, “All of these leaders were meeting together in order to launch the same horrific, horrendous attack that we had on October 7th by Hamas, by burning Israelis, butchering them, raping their women, abducting and taking hostage old people and young, and little babies—so this is exactly the same plan that they’ve been planning for years under the empire of evil of Iran.”
In addition to Herzog, a report in Al-Monitor, cited by Israel Hayom and based on a senior source linked to Hezbollah, said a ground invasion of Israel was the topic of the fateful meeting on Friday. The plot was to use the attack as revenge for the mass exploding pager attack that hit Hezbollah last week.
The precise targeted strike by Israeli jets on Friday in the Lebanese capital of Beirut killed 16 Hezbollah terrorists, per the IDF website report. This included five Radwan Force regional commanders, in addition to Aqil and Samir.
IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, in a separate post to the IDF website, noted on Friday that slain terror commander Aqil “had the blood of many innocent people on his hands: Israelis, Americans, French, Lebanese and more.” This included involvement in the bombing of a United States marine barracks in 1983 and kidnapping Americans and Germans in Lebanon. The US had a $7 million reward outstanding for key information on Aqil, according to the US State Department website.
Hagari noted that Aqil was even endangering Lebanese innocents when he was killed. “At the time of the strike, Aqil and the commanders of the Radwan Forces, were gathered underground, under a residential building in the heart of the Dahieh in Beirut, hiding among Lebanese civilians, using them as human shields. They were in the middle of planning more terror attacks against Israeli civilians.”
The assassination of Aqil is yet another blow to Hezbollah’s leadership. IDF’s official feed on X (formerly Twitter) posted an organizational chart showing six of the top nine military leaders in Hezbollah have been eliminated. Said the IDF post, “Hezbollah’s military chain of command has been almost completely dismantled after a dozen significant terrorists including Ibrahim Aqil were eliminated yesterday.
“We will continue operating against any terrorist organization that poses a threat to our civilians on all fronts.”
(By Joshua Spurlock, www.themideastupdate.com, September 22, 2024)