Top Hezbollah commander among 14 killed in Israeli strike on Beirut
(VOVWORLD) - Israel killed a top Hezbollah commander and other senior figures in the Lebanese movement in an airstrike on Beirut on Friday, vowing to press on with a new military campaign until it is able to secure the area around the Lebanese border.
The Israeli military and a security source in Lebanon said Ibrahim Aqil had been killed with other senior members of an elite Hezbollah unit in the airstrike, sharply escalating the year-long conflict between Israel and the group.
Israeli military said that Aqil, who served on Hezbollah's top military body, was the acting commander of the group's elite Radwan force and that he was killed along with other senior commanders of the unit.
In a statement summarizing Aqil's biography, Hezbollah said he was killed in Beirut's southern suburbs of Dahiyeh in what it called a "treacherous Israeli assassination".
Aqil has a 7 million USD bounty on his head from the United States over his link to the deadly bombing of Marines in Lebanon in 1983, according to the US State Department website.