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from https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/killed-hezbollah-commander-aqil-was-wanted-deadly-1983-us-embassy-marine-blasts-2024-09-20/?utm_source=newsshowcase&utm_medium=gnews&utm_campaign=CDAqDQgAKgYICjC3oAwwsCYwtsufAw&utm_content=rundown&gaa_at=g&gaa_n=
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Killed Hezbollah commander Aqil was wanted for deadly 1983 US embassy,
Marine blasts
By Reuters
September 20, 20249:34 AM PDTUpdated 12 min ago

Item 1 of 2 An undated photograph of Ibrahim Aqil, who serves on
Hezbollah's top military body as a senior commander according to two
security sources in Lebanon and the Israeli Army Radio, appears on a
wanted poster circulated by the U.S. Department of State's Diplomatic
Security Service entity "Rewards for Justice". U.S. State
Department/Handout via REUTERS
[1/2]An undated photograph of Ibrahim Aqil, who serves on Hezbollah's
top military body as a senior commander according to two security
sources in Lebanon and the Israeli Army Radio, appears on a wanted
poster circulated by the U.S. Department of State's Diplomatic Security
Service entity "Rewards for... Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
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BEIRUT, Sept 20 (Reuters) - Ibrahim Aqil, the Hezbollah operations
commander killed in an Israeli strike on Friday, had a $7 million bounty
on his head for two 1983 Beirut truck bombings that killed more than 300
people at the American embassy and a U.S. Marines barracks.
Two security sources in Lebanon confirmed the veteran fighter was killed
in an airstrike on Beirut's southern suburbs during a meeting of the
elite Radwan unit of the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group.
Aqil, who has also used the aliases Tahsin and Abdelqader, was the
second member of Hezbollah's top military body, the Jihad Council, to be
killed in two months after an Israeli strike in the same area targeted
Fuad Shukr in July.
Israel escalated its attacks on the group this week after months of
border fighting triggered by the conflict in Gaza that began on Oct. 7
with a deadly raid and hostage-taking in Israel by Hezbollah's
Palestinian ally Hamas.
Like Shukr, Aqil is a veteran of Hezbollah, which was founded by Iran's Revolutionary Guards in the early 1980s to battle Israeli forces that
had invaded and occupied Lebanon.
Born in a village in Lebanon's Beqaa valley sometime around 1960, Aqil
had joined the other big Lebanese Shi'ite political movement, Amal,
before switching to Hezbollah as a founding member, according to a
security source.
The United States accuses him of a role in the Beirut truck bombings at
the American embassy in April 1983, which killed 63 people, and a U.S.
Marine barracks six months later that killed 241 people.
It further accused him of directing the abduction of American and German hostages in Lebanon and listed him as a Specially Designated Global
Terrorist in 2019, putting the $7 million bounty on his head.
Referring to the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks and other attacks
on Western interests in Lebanon in the 1980s, Hezbollah leader Sayyed
Hassan Nasrallah said in a 2022 interview with an Arabic broadcaster
that they were carried out by small groups not linked to Hezbollah.
Aqil's cohort of founding Hezbollah operatives helped turn the group
from a shadowy militia into Lebanon's most powerful military and
political organisation, pushing Israel from its occupation of the south
in 2000 and fighting it again in 2006.
When Shukr was killed in July, it was seen as the heaviest blow to its
command structure since the 2008 assassination of Imad Mughniyeh,
remembered by Hezbollah as a legendary commander but by Israel and the
United States as a terrorist.
Aqil, whose bounty was set by the United States at an even higher value
than that of Shukr's, may prove a similar blow.
The Reuters Daily Briefing newsletter provides all the news you need to
start your day. Sign up here.
Reporting by Maya Gebeily and Tom Perry; Writing by Angus McDowall;
Editing by Howard Goller

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