Ibrahim "al-Hajj Tahsin" Aqil (1962-20 September 2024) was a member of Hezbollah's Jihad Council and the leader of the group's special forces unit, the Redwan Force.
Biography[]
Ibrahim Aqil was born in Lebanon in 1962, and he became a key figure in the Islamic Jihad Organization during the 1980s. Aqil helped plan the 1983 United States embassy bombing and the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings, for which the United States offered a reward of up to $7 million for his capture. Aqil was also responsible for the kidnapping of American and German hostages during the Lebanese Civil War. During the 1980s and early 1990s, he received training in North Korea. In 2000, he was targeted by Israeli Apache helicopters in the village of Barish, but he was lightly injured and managed to escape. During the Syrian Civil War, he assisted the organization's fighters in their fight against the Syrian Opposition, but, after Mustafa Badreddine's assassination in 2016, he was passed over for promotion to Chief of Staff by Fuad Shukr. He was instead made head of Hezbollah's operations and its Redwan Force, and he led Hezbollah's tunnel project in Lebanon. On 20 September 2024, he was targeted and killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut's Dahieh suburb.