The Wall Street Journal has revealed details about the assassination of Hezbollah leader Fuad Shukr, known as “The Ghost,” indicating that a phone call led to his death.
According to the report, Israel managed to infiltrate Hezbollah’s communication network, allowing Mossad to contact Shukr. In the call, Shukr was instructed to move from his office on the second floor of the targeted building to the seventh floor, where he lived with his wife, making it easier for Israel to target him.
The report highlighted that Fuad Shukr had evaded the United States for four decades since the bombing that killed 241 American soldiers in a Marine barracks in Beirut, an attack that the U.S. claims Shukr helped plan. At the end of July, an Israeli airstrike killed him on the seventh floor of a residential building not far from the site of that attack.
Shukr, described as a key figure in Hezbollah, was one of its founders and a longtime trusted friend of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. He played a significant role in developing the missile arsenal that has made Hezbollah one of the most formidable non-state armed groups in the world. Over the past ten months, he had been leading the increasingly intense border skirmishes between Hezbollah and Israel.
The newspaper noted that Shukr spent his last day in his office on the second floor of the building in Beirut’s southern suburbs, while he lived on the seventh floor to avoid frequent travel between the two locations.
The report further revealed that Shukr received a phone call from Nasrallah just hours before the strike. According to a Hezbollah source, Shukr was informed during the call that someone would visit him at his apartment on the seventh floor. Around 7:00 PM on July 30, Israel bombed the building, resulting in the deaths of Shukr, his wife, two other women, and two children.
On the morning of the assassination, Hezbollah ordered its senior leaders to disperse out of concern for their safety. It was reported that Shukr’s body was thrown into an adjacent building by the force of the explosion.