Israel strikes Hezbollah target in Beirut in retaliation for soccer field attack

Israel said on Tuesday that it carried out a targeted strike in Beirut, Lebanon, against the Hezbollah commander responsible for the rocket attack that struck a soccer field in northern Israel and killed 12 children and teenagers.

The strike marks the first significant operation by the Israel Defense Forces in retaliation for the deadly Hezbollah rocket attack on the village of Majdal Shams that occurred on Saturday. Israel and Lebanon have been trading lower-level fire for the past 10 months following Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel.

“Hezbollah crossed the red line,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant wrote on the social media site X following the strike.

The target of the strike was Fuad Shukr, also known as al-Hajj Mohsin, a senior advisor on military affairs to Hezbollah’s leader, Hasan Nasrallah.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said later Tuesday that fighter jets struck an area in Beirut that killed Shukr.

The FBI had put out a $5 million reward related to Shukr’s whereabouts, saying he “played a central role in the October 23, 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps Barracks in Beirut which killed 241 U.S. military personnel and wounded 128 others.”

The FBI said that Shukr also served on Hezbollah’s highest military body, the Jihad Council, and has aided Hezbollah fighters and Syrian troops in support of Syrian President Bashar al Assad throughout the Syrian Civil War.

While the IDF had carried out strikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in the immediate aftermath of the rocket strike, a more substantial retaliation is expected after the Israeli Security Cabinet agreed on Sunday to give Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Gallant expanded authority to respond.

Israel’s strike in Beirut apparently marks the second time it has carried out an assassination in the Lebanese capital. An alleged Israeli strike in Beirut in January killed a top Hamas official, Saleh al-Arouri. While Lebanese officials blamed Israel for the attack, Israeli officials never officially claimed responsibility.

The U.S. has offered support for Israel’s right to act in its self-defense but had urged restraint on both the sides to avoid escalation into a wider conflict, amid efforts to secure a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza that is viewed as the best way to calm overall tensions in the Middle East. 

The Biden administration has not addressed, publicly, reports that it warned Israel against striking Beirut. 

Deputy State Department Spokesperson Vedant Patel did not offer comment in the immediate aftermath of Israel claiming responsibility for the strike in Beirut, but reiterated the administration’s support for Israel’s defense and diplomacy. 

“Israel has every right to defend itself, certainly for the things like malign, Iran-backed proxies like Hezbollah, and it certainly faces threats like no other country does in that region of the world,” Patel said. “We of course want to make sure that through our diplomacy conditions can be created in which civilians cna return home, but I don’t have any other updates on that.”

Updated at 6:03 p.m.