Important Takeaways:

• Hezbollah’s operations commander, Ibrahim Aqil, was the subject of a $7 million State Department reward for information leading to his arrest.
• The Israeli military said it had killed Aqil and as many as 10 other senior commanders of the movement’s Radwan special forces unit.
• “This elimination is intended to protect the citizens of Israel,” an Israeli military spokesman said in a brief statement.
• The State Department has identified Aqil, also known as Tahsin, as a member of Hezbollah’s “highest military body,” the Jihad Council.
• In the 1980s, as different factions vied for control of Lebanon and a U.S. Marine detachment was deployed as a would-be peacekeeping force, Aqil was a top figure in Hezbollah’s Islamic Jihad Organization. The organization took credit for the April 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, which killed 63 people, and the Marine Corps barracks in October of that year, which killed 241 Americans.
• Aqil also oversaw the abductions of American and German hostages in Lebanon, the State Department said last year. The department named Aqil a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” in 2019.
• Israel’s Defense Forces said they struck more than 100 Hezbollah missile launchers as well as a munitions depot Thursday and Friday as well as targets in Beirut.

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