Phone call lured Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr to 7th floor of building to be killed in Israeli strike — report

Top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr received a phone call from an unknown person to go to the seventh floor of the residential building in Beirut where he would be killed by an Israeli airstrike, an unnamed Hezbollah official tells The Wall Street Journal.

At the time of the strike, the secretive commander was in his office on the second floor of the building, and bringing him five floors higher to his apartment likely made it easier for Israel to target him, the official says, who adds that Hezbollah and Iran are probing the intelligence failure.

An initial assessment suggests Israel’s superior technology and hacking overcame the terror group’s countersurveillance system, the official tells the WSJ.

The July 30 strike killed Shukr, his wife, two other women, and two children, and came in response to a deadly Hezbollah rocket attack on the northern town of Majdal Shams that killed 12 children and teenagers.