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Lebanese group Hezbollah has confirmed in a statement that its senior commander Fuad Shukr was killed in an Israeli attack in southern Beirut.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military said it carried out a “precision strike” in Beirut that killed Shukr. According to Israeli military planners, he had been responsible for the missile strike that killed twelve children playing football in Majdal Shams in the occupied Golan Heights on Saturday.
Hezbollah who previously said Shukr had survived, said in a statement on Telegram that “the great jihadist commander brother Fuad Shukr (Hajj Mohsen) was present” in the building targeted by “the Zionist enemy”.
Announcing his death, the group added that Shukr’s presence was “a distinctive force for resistance” and said that their leader, Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, would make an address on the occasion of Shukr’s funeral on Thursday.
On Tuesday, the attack on a densely populated area in Beirut’s suburbs hit the Haret Hreik neighbourhood near Hezbollah’s Shura Council, its central decision-making authority.
Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said three people, including two children, were also killed and 74 wounded in the attack that the Israeli military described as a “targeted assassination operation” against Shukr, also known as Mohsen Shukr and al-Hajj Mohsen.
Reporting from Beirut, Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr said the Israeli messaging is that this was their promised response to the Majdal Shams attack and that they are not interested in more armed confrontation with Hezbollah beyond this.
While Hezbollah has promised to respond to any kind of attack from Israel, Khodr said that a coordinated response from Iran and its regional allies following the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh this morning in Tehran, could take place.
In a televised statement on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel faces “challenging times ahead” but that it is “prepared for all scenarios”.
Earlier, Ori Goldberg, a political commentator in Tel Aviv, told Al Jazeera that “a war with Lebanon could perhaps rally Israelis around the flag but its effects would be almost immediately disastrous.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has denounced strikes on Beirut and Tehran as a “dangerous escalation,” after Israel targeted a top Hezbollah commander in Lebanon and Hamas said its political chief was killed in Iran.
“The Secretary-General believes that the attacks we have seen in South Beirut and Tehran represent a dangerous escalation at a moment in which all efforts should instead be leading to a ceasefire in Gaza”, spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.