The Israeli military conducted an airstrike on Thursday in Beirut, killing senior Hezbollah commander Mohammed Srur, also known as Abu Saleh. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that the strike targeted Srur, a key figure in Hezbollah’s drone program, in an apartment building in the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahiyeh.
The Israeli Air Force and Intelligence Division carried out the mission, which the IDF described as a precision strike. In a statement, the IDF said that Srur had been instrumental in Hezbollah’s production of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and explosives, establishing sites under civilian buildings in Lebanon. “He was one of the project leaders for the production of UAVs in Lebanon,” the IDF added.
The airstrike occurred near the site of a previous attack last week that killed Ibrahim Aqil, commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, along with other high-ranking commanders. Lebanon’s Health Ministry confirmed that two people were killed in Thursday’s attack, and local officials said that three missiles hit a 10-storey residential building.
Hezbollah later confirmed that Srur, their drone commander, had been targeted, but did not initially clarify his fate. An official source from the group told AFP that Israeli airstrikes had indeed focused on Srur, a long-standing Hezbollah member who joined in the 1980s and later became a key adviser sent to Yemen to train Houthi rebels, a group backed by Iran.
The strike on Srur marks at least the fourth high-profile assassination of Hezbollah leaders by Israel in recent days, following the killings of Ibrahim Qubaisi, Fuad Shukr, Mohammed Nasser, and Taleb Abdallah.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, attending the UN General Assembly in New York, reaffirmed Israel’s intention to continue “full force” strikes against Hezbollah until the group ceases firing rockets across the border. This stance comes despite efforts by U.S. and European officials to broker a cease-fire and halt the violence for a 21-day period to allow diplomatic negotiations to unfold.
