BEIRUT, July 30 — Fuad Shukr, the top Hezbollah commander that Israel says it killed in a strike on Beirut’s suburbs Tuesday night, has been the shadowy figure orchestrating the group’s months-long attacks on northern Israel.

Shukr, who goes by the nom de guerre Hajj Mohsen Shukr, "commands military operations in southern Lebanon”, where the group has been exchanging near-daily fire with Israel since war erupted in Gaza in October, a source close to Hezbollah told AFP.

The source, who requested anonymity, said Shukr was the successor of Hezbollah’s top commander Imad Mughniyeh, killed in a 2008 car bombing in Damascus that the Iran-backed group blamed on Israel.

In 2017, the US Treasury offered $5 million for information on Shukr, in his early sixties, describing him as "a senior adviser” to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

The Treasury said he had "a central role” in the deadly 1983 bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut.

Shukr serves on Hezbollah’s "highest military body, the Jihad Council”, and has aided Hezbollah fighters and Syrian troops against rebels in Syria, the Treasury said.

The Israeli military said its fighter jets "eliminated” Shukr on Tuesday, accusing him of being responsible for a rocket strike on the annexed Golan Heights that killed 12 children over the weekend.

The Israeli army has described him as Hezbollah’s "most senior military commander” and "Nasrallah’s right-hand man”.

"As the Head of Hezbollah’s Strategic Unit, Fuad was responsible for the majority of Hezbollah’s most advanced weaponry, including precise-guided missiles, cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, long-range rockets and UAVs,” the army said. — AFP