The body of Hezbollah military “chief of staff” Fuad Shukr was found Wednesday beneath the rubble of a four-story building in Beirut destroyed Tuesday night in an Israeli airstrike, sources confirmed to Sky News Arabia.
The discovery confirms with finality that the targeted assassination of Shukr, also known as “Sayyid” Mohsain, was successful.
A second body was also found, according to the report. According to reports in the US, it was his paramour for that night.
The Israel Defense Forces said Shukr was behind the rocket attack on Saturday that killed 12 children and wounded some 30 other people, including 17 children, in the northern Israeli Druze village of Majdal Shams, as well as an attack that killed a young Israeli man at Kibbutz HaGoshrim two days later.
The rocket that hit Majdal Shams was a Falaq-1 unguided rocket carrying 53 kilograms (117 pounds) of explosives. It struck the children directly as they raced for a nearby bomb shelter. Hezbollah is the sole terror group to possess this Iranian-made rocket.
“Mohsain is the most senior military figure in Hezbollah, and he is also a person very close to Nasrallah; he essentially arranges all military matters for him — arranged for him in the past,” IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said at a meeting with IDF soldiers Wednesday morning.
“This man is responsible for giving all the orders, for the 12 children who were killed Saturday afternoon in Majdal Shams, for the person killed yesterday in Kibbutz HaGoshrim during the afternoon hours,” Halevi said.
The United States accused Mohsain of planning the 1983 truck bomb attack on a Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 US service members. Mohsain was listed on America’s Most Wanted List, with a bounty on his head for $5 million dollars.
Three missiles were fired by a combat drone in the targeted assassination, which destroyed a building that served as a headquarters and coordination center for Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Mohsain’s family has been informed that his body was recovered.
