Abu Khalil Barji

A senior commander in Hezbollah's Radwan Force, the organisation's elite special operations unit responsible for cross-border infiltration and coordinated assaults on military targets. The unit is named after Imad Mughniyeh (nom de guerre 'Hajj Radwan'), Hezbollah's military chief killed in Damascus in 2008. Its top commander Ibrahim Aqil was killed in a Beirut airstrike in September 2024.

Israel killed Barji in an airstrike on Majdal Selm in southern Lebanon on 22 March 2026, continuing a sustained campaign to decapitate Radwan Force leadership. Days later the IDF destroyed another Radwan command post, confirming the unit remains Israel's primary targeting priority in Lebanon.

The IDF frames Radwan commanders as the operational planners most capable of replicating October 7-style cross-border assaults against northern Israel. Each killing degrades institutional knowledge of Israeli border defences, terrain reconnaissance, and tunnel network operations. But Hezbollah has historically replaced commanders without losing operational capability for long; the question is whether the pace of Israeli strikes now exceeds the pace of regeneration.