Ibrahim Aqil, the head of an elite Hezbollah unit, has been killed in a targeted strike in Beirut, Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced on Friday.
The US blamed Aqil for the April 1983 bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut that killed 63 people, and offered a $7 million bounty on his head in 2019.
“Air Force fighter jets targeted the Beirut area and killed Ibrahim Aqil, the head of the Hezbollah terrorist organization’s operations team, the acting commander of the unit Radwan and the commander of the ‘Galile Conquest Plan,’” the IDF said in a statement.
Several of Radwan’s top Radwan unit officers were also “eliminated” alongside Aqil, the IDF said. The Israeli military said Aqil and his unit were plotting a raid on Galilee along the same lines as Hezbollah’s October 7 attack from Gaza.
At least three people were killed and 17 wounded in the bombing, two Israeli security sources told Axios on Friday. Saudi TV outlet Al-Arabiya reported that Aqil was killed in the Israeli strike. Hezbollah has not confirmed his death