IDF says strike kills head of Hezbollah unit charged with smuggling arms from Iran
Unit 4400 chief targeted in Beirut; military says he was also involved in terror group’s precision missile program; Iranian militia commander killed in same strike
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
The IDF said Tuesday it killed the commander of Hezbollah’s Unit 4400, which is tasked with delivering weapons from Iran and its proxies to Lebanon in its latest strike targeting the terror group’s top leadership.
Muhammad Ja’far Qassir, who headed Unit 4400, was killed in a strike carried out by fighter jets in Beirut, according to the military.
The IDF said that it also killed the commander of the Imam Hossein Division, an Iranian militia which operates alongside Hezbollah, in the same strike. The military named the commander as Daw Alfakher Hinawi.
It said the Imam Hossein Division has carried out numerous rocket and drone attacks on Israel amid the war, from Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. The division was behind a drone that struck a school in Eilat in November 2023, causing damage.
The IDF said Qassir was “one of the senior leaders of the Hezbollah terror organization and the most dominant [person] in the Iran-Hezbollah-Syria terror axis, and is considered close to the Iranian regime.”
He was involved in hundreds of “strategic” weapons smuggling operations from Iran to Hezbollah and was among those who advanced the terror group’s precision missile project.
Qassir served as head of Unit 4400 for some 15 years, the IDF said.
Since October 8, Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis, with the group saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war there.
So far, the skirmishes have resulted in 26 civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of 22 IDF soldiers and reservists. There have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.
Before the escalation of the last two weeks, Hezbollah had named 516 members killed by Israel during the skirmishes, mostly in Lebanon but some also in Syria. Another 92 operatives from other terror groups, a Lebanese soldier, and dozens of civilians have also been killed.
Then, earlier in September, thousands of Hezbollah’s communication devices exploded, reportedly taking some 1,500 fighters out of action, in an attack widely blamed on Israel.
Following Israeli airstrikes wiped out most of Hezbollah’s leadership in repeated strikes, culminating in the IDF killing longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday, when fighter jets dropped massive bunker-buster bombs on the group’s underground headquarters, located beneath residential buildings in a suburb of Beirut.
The IDF said it sent ground forces into southern Lebanon late on Monday night focused on “Hezbollah targets and infrastructure” in a number of Lebanese villages along the border that posed an immediate threat to Israeli towns on the other side of the Blue Line.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry says more than 1,000 Lebanese have been killed and 6,000 wounded in the past two weeks, without specifying how many were civilians. Israel has said that many Hezbollah operatives are among the dead. One million people — a fifth of the population — have fled their homes, the government says.
