Ahmed Wahbi is among more than a dozen senior officers killed in an IDF strike on Beirut
Workers use heavy construction equipment to remove debris from the site of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut, Lebanon, September 21, 2024 © Getty Images / Houssam Shbaro
Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah has acknowledged that one of its senior commanders, Ahmed Wahbi, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Friday. Ibrahim Aqil, the head of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit, was also killed along with a dozen other officers.
Hezbollah announced Wahbi’s death to Reuters early on Saturday, several hours after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed to have killed him. According to the IDF, Wahbi oversaw training for Hezbollah’s Radwan special forces unit until early 2024, plotted a raid on Galilee along the same lines as Hamas’ October 7 attack from Gaza, and orchestrated numerous “infiltration and shooting attacks” on Israeli territory.
Wahbi was killed in an airstrike on an apartment building in Beirut on Friday morning. Twelve other Hezbollah officers, including several Radwan unit commanders, were among the dead, the IDF claimed. The most senior of these commanders was Ibrahim Aqil, who the IDF claimed led the unit and served as head of Hezbollah’s operations since 2004.
The US blamed Aqil for the April 1983 bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut that killed 63 people, and placed a $7 million bounty on his head in 2019.
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The airstrike killed a total of 37 people, including three children and seven women, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. More than 60 people were injured, including the family of an RT Arabic reporter who lived in an adjacent building.
Shortly before Wahbi’s death was announced, Hezbollah fired hundreds of rockets into Israel and the occupied Golan Heights. Israeli fighter jets struck some 180 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon in response, the IDF said, claiming that the strikes destroyed thousands of rocket launcher barrels that were ready to fire into Israeli territory.
While Hezbollah had been waging a low-intensity campaign against Israel since the start of the Israel-Hamas war last year, the sudden detonation of thousands of pagers and radios used by the group earlier this week sparked fears of a wider regional war breaking out. Multiple American, Arab, and Israeli sources have identified Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency as the culprit behind the pager explosions.
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The blasts marked the beginning of “a new phase” in the conflict, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared on Wednesday, announcing that Israel would shift “forces, resources, and energy” from Gaza toward Lebanon.
Beyond several rocket launches on Friday and Saturday, Hezbollah has not responded to the latest Israeli attacks. The group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has warned that Israel will receive “a just punishment,” adding that any attempt by the IDF to invade southern Lebanon would have “dire consequences” for the Jewish state.
