The Hezbollah commander
killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburbs Friday was one of
the Lebanese militant group’s top military officials, in charge of its elite
forces, and had been on Washington’s wanted list for years.
Ibrahim Akil, 61, was the second top
commander of Hezbollah to be killed in an Israeli airstrike in the southern suburb
of Beirut in as many months, dealing a severe blow to the group’s command
structure.
The strike Friday came as the group
was still reeling from a widely suspected Israeli attack targeting Hezbollah
communications earlier this week when thousands of pagers exploded simultaneously. The attack
killed 12 people, mostly Hezbollah members, and injured thousands.
Akil was a member of Hezbollah’s
highest military body, the Jihad Council since 2008, and head of the elite
Radwan Forces. The forces also fought in Syria gaining experience in urban
warfare and counterinsurgency. Israel has been attempting to push the fighters
back from the border.
Israel said the Friday strike on Beirut’s southern Dahiya
district killed Akil and 10 other Hezbollah operatives.
Little is known about
Akil, who rose through the ranks of the group’s military command over decades.
Born in Baalbek in the east of Lebanon, he joined Hezbollah in its early days
in the 1980s.
Elijah Magnier, a Brussels-based military and
counterterrorism analyst with knowledge of the group, said he was one of the
group’s old guard.
“He started at the
beginning of Hezbollah’s creation, and he moved to different responsibilities.
To be a member of the Jihadi Council, this is the highest (post), and to be the
leader of the Radwan Forces is also very privileged,” Magnier said.
Akil was under U.S. sanctions and in 2023, the U.S. State
Department announced a reward of up to $7 million for information leading to
his “identification, location, arrest, and/or conviction.”
The State Department
described him as a “key leader” in Hezbollah. It said that Akil was part of the
group that carried out the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and that
he had directed the taking of American and German hostages in Lebanon and held
them there during the 1980s.
The U.S. Treasury Department designated him a “terrorist” in
2015, followed by another designation by the State Department as a “global
terrorist.”
Before his death, he had risen to become one of three top
commanders of the Hezbollah forces, along with Fouad Shukr, who was the top
military commander in the group and was also
killed in an Israeli strike in the southern
suburb of Beirut in July. Ali Karaki leads the southern front.
The Radwan Forces, estimated at between 7,000 to 10,000
strong, with fighters trained in special operations and urban warfare, have had
little involvement in the current conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. The
fighting has been dominated so far by exchanges of missiles and strikes along
border areas. Hezbollah rocket and missile launches have marked the group’s
efforts to support Hamas.
“The Israelis were right and wrong. They are right by saying
they killed the one who was planning to conduct an operation similar to Oct.
7,” said Magnier, the analyst.
In case of an Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon or a
Hezbollah cross-border operation, Akil would have been the one leading the
Radwan Forces. But he didn’t head the entire military operation against Israel,
Magnier said.
Mohannad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle
East Center think tank who researches Hezbollah, said Akil is an “old school”
military commander who was close to the Iranians. He received three year years
of officer training in Iran and took part in all the wars in Lebanon, as well
as in Syria.
Hanin Ghaddar, a Hezbollah researcher with the Washington
Institute, said when Mustafa Badreddine, the Hezbollah commander who was
supervising the group’s role in the war in Syria, was killed in 2016, Akil
replaced him in that role. At the time, a three-tier command structure of
Hezbollah military forces was created, with Akil as one of its main pillars.
Ghaddar said there were reports that Akil was among those who
were lightly injured in the mass explosion of pagers. There was no official
confirmation of those reports. At least 37 people were killed and about 3,000
injured in two waves of simultaneous explosions of communications devices
across Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The pager attacks dealt a major blow to Hezbollah’s
communication structure, which may explain why the group’s top forces were
meeting Friday in the southern suburb of Beirut face to face, Ghaddar said.
“It is a big blow to Hezbollah,” she said.
Ghaddar said the attack on Akil disrupted the group’s command
structure on the heels of the attacks that undermined its communication system
and reveals how much intelligence Israel has about the militant group. She said
the group will likely take time to respond and recover.
“They will recover obviously. They recovered from 2006 and
many things,” she said, referring to a bruising the monthlong war between
Hezbollah and Israel. “But it is going to take time.”
Magnier and Hage Ali said the Friday strike signals a new
phase of the war with Israel.
“What is significant is the location and the beginning of a
new (phase of the) war,” involving an aerial campaign and the targeted
assassination of military leaders, Magnier said.
Israel seemed set on exerting pressure on Hezbollah’s
leadership, Magnier said, particularly in the southern suburb of Beirut, where
the group has many of its offices and supporters, seeking to target commanders
and drive civilians out of the area. Israel is saying: “If our people (in the north)
can’t return, your people (in the suburb) will be displaced.”