Hezbollah Commander Ibrahim Akil Reportedly Targeted in Dahieh Strike

Ibrahim Akil, whom Israel claimed to have killed in an airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs on Friday, was the head of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit and had been on a U.S. sanctions list for nearly a decade.

The United States had identified Akil as a “key leader” within Hezbollah and had offered a $7 million reward for information about him. His death marks the second time in nearly a year that a top Hezbollah commander has been killed during ongoing clashes between the militant group and Israel related to the Gaza conflict.

Like many of Hezbollah’s military leaders, little was publicly known about Akil, who was referred to by his alias, Hajj Abdul Qader, within the group. According to a source close to Hezbollah, Akil was the second-highest military leader after Fouad Shukur, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Beirut’s southern stronghold on July 30.

Lebanese officials have reported that Israel has repeatedly demanded, through international intermediaries, that Hezbollah’s Radwan Force, which leads the group’s ground operations, be moved away from the border.

 

Radwan Unit and Akil’s Role

The Radwan Force is Hezbollah’s most powerful offensive unit, with its fighters trained in cross-border operations, according to a source close to the group. Some of these fighters have combat experience beyond Lebanon, including in Syria, where Hezbollah has openly supported President Bashar al-Assad’s forces since 2013.

The U.S. Treasury previously stated that Akil “played a vital role” in Hezbollah’s Syrian campaign. Since October, Hezbollah has lost two of its three regional commanders in southern Lebanon, Mohammed Naameh Nasser, who was killed in July by an Israeli airstrike, and Taleb Abdallah, who died in a strike a month earlier. Additionally, the Radwan Force lost commander Wissam Tawil in January.

Akil was also a member of Hezbollah’s Jihad Council, the group’s highest military authority. The U.S. Treasury described him as a “principal member” of the Islamic Jihad Organization, a Hezbollah-affiliated group responsible for the 1983 U.S. embassy bombing in Beirut, which killed 63 people, and the same year’s bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks, which killed 241 soldiers.

In the late 1980s, Akil was involved in the kidnapping of two German nationals and bombings in Paris in 1986. He was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury as a terrorist in 2015, and in 2019, the U.S. State Department designated him as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist.”