Who was Ali Karaki, Hezbollah senior commander and target of Israeli strike on Lebanon?

Karaki was killed alongside the group's leader Hassan Nasrallah on Saturday

The rubble at one site of Friday's Israeli strike on Dahieh in south Beirut. AP

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Senior Hezbollah commander Ali Karaki was killed alongside the group's leader Hassan Nasrallah in an overnight strike on Beirut on Friday, the militant group said on Sunday.

Hezbollah announced his death “with great pride and honour” in a statement shared by the National News Agency on Sunday afternoon.

The attack in the Dahieh suburb destroyed six buildings, killed dozens of people and left many wounded. Thousands fled to other parts of the city, seeking safety.

Karaki was the target of an Israeli strike on the Bir El Abed neighbourhood in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahieh on Monday. After that attack, Hezbollah published a statement saying that Karaki was well and in a safe place after the Israeli effort, responding to the “allegations of the Zionist enemy regarding the assassination”.

A few days ago, the Israeli army released a graph claiming to show the current military leadership of Hezbollah, in which Karaki appears as the third-ranking member at the top of the organisation.

In September 2019, he was hit by US sanctions along with Ibrahim Aqil and Fouad Shukr, two other senior Hezbollah commanders killed in Israeli strikes this year.

The US State Department described Karaki at the time as a “senior member of Hezbollah's Jihad Council”, Hezbollah's leading military body, adding that he is responsible for operations in southern Lebanon.

There is no public picture of him. He was one of the only surviving founding members after the assassinations of Shukr and Aqil, with whom he shared rank. Aqil and Shukr were also members of Hezbollah’s Jihad Council.

Israeli media reports claimed that Aqil became Nasrallah's second-in-command after Israel's July assassination of Shukr, who had previously held the position. Aqil was killed on Friday in an air strike on Dahieh.

Tension in Lebanon has reached high levels, with Israel launching an aerial campaign that has killed at least 720 people in the country.