Top Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukr was killed in an Israeli airstrike on July 30 after receiving a mysterious phone call directing him to move to a specific location within his Beirut residence. According to an unnamed Hezbollah official speaking to The Wall Street Journal, Shukr was in his office on the second floor of a residential building in the Dahya quarter—an area known as a Hezbollah stronghold—when he was instructed to go to his apartment on the seventh floor.

The official suggested that the call, which instructed Shukr to move five floors up to his apartment, was likely intended to make him an easier target for the Israeli military. The call likely came from someone who had breached Hezbollah’s internal communications network, facilitating the precision strike.

The strike, which occurred around 7 p.m., killed Shukr, his wife, two other women, and two children.

The Hezbollah official revealed that both Hezbollah and Iran are now investigating the intelligence failure that led to the assassination. An initial assessment indicates that Israel's advanced technology and cyber capabilities may have penetrated Hezbollah's countersurveillance systems, allowing Israel to track Shukr's movements and communications.

Shukr was known as a "ghost" within Hezbollah due to his extreme secrecy and the rarity of his public appearances. To minimize exposure to potential attacks, he lived and worked in the same building in the Dahya quarter. His identity was so closely guarded that, following his assassination, Lebanese media mistakenly published a photograph of someone else, believing it to be Shukr.

The Wall Street Journal report also noted that Shukr had anticipated Israeli retaliation for the attack on Majdal Shams and had instructed senior Hezbollah commanders to go into hiding. Despite these precautions, Shukr himself was ultimately targeted and killed in the precision strike.