A phone call facilitated the assassination of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr

The call likely came from someone who breached Hezbollah’s communications network.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

A phone call led Hezbollah commander to go to an apartment higher up in a building, thus facilitating his assassination, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Shukr, who lived an almost reclusive life despite his many activities with Hezbollah, received a phone call telling him to go to an apartment seven stories above the one where he was staying.

Soon after he moved to the new apartment, a strike slammed into the apartment and all those three stories below.

Shukr, his wife, two women and two children were killed in the attack.

The goal was to lure Shukr to a higher floor where he would be easier to target.

The call likely came from someone who breached Hezbollah’s communications network.

Hezbollah and Iran are investigating what led to the security breach and the assassination, but it is believed that Israel’s superior technology and hacking skills allowed it to interfere with communications.

Shukr was responsible for the attack on Majdal Shams that killed 12 children and is wanted by the US for the 1983 bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in an attack that killed 241 US Service personnel.

The US had put a $5 million bounty on the head of Fuad Shukr.

In addition, Shukr was a chief advisor to Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah and was the mastermind of the cross-border offensive that killed 8 IDF soldiers, kidnapped 2 others and started the 2006 Israel Lebanon War.

He was also instrumental in building Hezbollah’s arsenal from 15,000 to some 150,000, missiles, making it the best-armed nonstate actor in the region.

Shukr played a pivotal role in smuggling in Iranian weapons through Syria.

Hours after Fuad Shukr was assassinated in Beirut, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Tehran, reportedly by an explosion that was planted where he was staying months earlier and detonated by operatives within IRGC ranks.

The two assassinations have led to a standoff between Israel on one side and Hezbollah and Iran on the other, with the latter threatening to attack and get revenge for the assassinations.