Hezbollah denies WSJ report on commander Shokor's assassination
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Hezbollah's communications office denies The Wall Street Journal report about the assassination of martyred commander Fouad Shokor.
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Hezbollah fighters carry the coffin of their top commander Fouad Shokor, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday, July 30, during his funeral procession in a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, August 1, 2024. (AP)
Hezbollah's communications bureau strongly refuted a recent report by the Wall Street Journal concerning the assassination of senior commander Fouad Shokor. In an official statement released Sunday, the department labeled the story as "fabricated" and "completely baseless."
The statement emphasized that the narrative presented by The Wall Street Journal was filled with "lies" and had no factual grounding whatsoever. Furthermore, Hezbollah asserted that none of the three WSJ journalists who authored the article had ever met with any Hezbollah officials.
"The narrative is false at its core, and the source attributed to it is nothing but a product of its authors' imagination, with no purpose other than to promote and serve as propaganda for the Zionist enemy," the statement said.
The statement also criticized various Lebanese and Arab media outlets for republishing The Wall Street Journal's story without any verification, underlining that they "are aiding the Zionist project by doing so."
The newspaper had reported claims that the Israeli operation to assassinate Shokor involved penetrating Hezbollah's internal network and using a phone call to track him to the seventh floor of the building where he lived and worked before launching the fatal strike.
Fouad Shokor, also known by his kunya as "Sayyed Mohsen," was martyred on July 30, 2024, in an Israeli airstrike targeting a residential building in Haret Hreik, located in the southern suburbs of Beirut. The attack martyred seven individuals, including Iranian advisor Milad Beidi.
Who is commander Shokor?
Shokor began his militant activities in the Ouzai area in Lebanon's capital Beirut and quickly became a key figure in resisting the 1982 Israeli invasion. He participated in notable battles such as those in Khalde and the Faculty of Sciences in Beirut, where he emerged as a significant commander and helped establish Resistance groups.
Shokor was considered one of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's closest advisors and has been pursued by the United States for the alleged role he played in a bombing operation that eliminated US and French soldiers deployed in Lebanon during the Civil War, in the 1983 Beirut Barracks Bombings.
Following the operation, the US placed a $5 million bounty for any information on Shokor but failed to find him. He was designated as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" by the United States in 2019 after he was designated by the Department of the Treasury in 2015.
The New York Times, citing an anonymous Israeli military official and other informed sources, said Sayyed Hassan's confidant had assumed some of Martyr Mustafa Badreddine's responsibilities following his martyrdom in Syria.
