Jerusalem. The commander of the Radwan unit was killed in an Israeli attack in southern Beirut. Who was Ibrahim Akil?
“He had the blood of many innocents on his hands,” says Israel’s army spokesman about Ibrahim Aqil – now the top commander of the Hezbollah militia is no longer alive. He was killed along with fifteen other terrorists in a targeted attack by the Israeli Air Force on a residential building in the south of Beirut. The terrorists had been in the basement of the residential building. Israel’s army and secret services had already tried to kill Aqil several times – but he had always escaped.
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Aqil was one of the most powerful figures in the Hezbollah militia: As commander for military operations, he ordered the continuous shelling from southern Lebanon on villages and towns in northern Israel, which has continued since October. The 62-year-old is also said to have been pulling the strings for years to launch an attack on northern Israel – following a similar pattern to the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 in southern Israel. The plan was called the “Galilee Conquest Plan”. According to the plan, Hezbollah fighters would have invaded villages, murdered and kidnapped, and taken numerous Israeli hostages. Aqil has long experience with hostage-taking: He is also said to have played a central role in the hostage-taking of five Germans in the 1980s. Some of the hostages were not released until three years later.
Middle East conflict: Killed commander a wanted man
Aqil has been a wanted manHe was on the US terror list, and a reward of up to seven million dollars was offered for information on his identity. He is said to have been partly responsible for the deaths of at least 300 Americans in various terrorist attacks on US buildings in the Middle East.
Capital Inside by Jörg Quoos, Editor-in-Chief of the FUNKE Central Editorial Office
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At the time of the air strike, Aqil and the other Terrorists “hid among Lebanese civilians and used them as human shields,” says Hagari. “They were in the process of planning further terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.”
Read also: Big war? These three options now exist in the Middle East
According to Israeli military expert Giora Eiland, the army has managed to wipe out the entire ground command of the Radwan Force, an elite unit of Hezbollah, in one fell swoop. This is a severe blow and an important milestone in achieving the third war goal: making Israel’s north habitable again. At least 65,000 Israelis have currently been evacuated from the north to areas further south because they are not safe in their homes. To enable their return, Israel’s army is now concentrating less on Gaza and more on the Lebanon“We do not want an open war with Hezbollah, but we will no longer be as passive as we have been in the past,” explains Eiland. The pager attacks and the targeted killing of Akil are two examples of Israel’s new strategy: “No longer just reacting when we are attacked – but initiating attacks ourselves.”
Now the question is how Hezbollah, but also Iran and Iraq react to Akil’s killing. “The situation is very sensitive,” says Eiland. The current mood can be compared to the time just before the First World War, says the expert, who himself used to be the head of military operations in the Israeli armed forces: “A full escalation is almost inevitable.”
