Incident Code
Incident Code
Incident Date
Location
Airwars Assessment
On June 21, 2025, a vehicle carrying three men was hit in an alleged Israeli airstrike or drone strike near the Iran-Iraq border on the way from Iraq to Tehran. Hussein Khalil (nicknamed Abu Ali), the former bodyguard and son-in-law of Hassan Nasrallah, was killed, along with his son, Mahdi Hussein al-Khalil and Haider al-Musawi, a senior member of the Kataeb Sayyid al-Shuhada, an Iraqi militia group backed by the Revolutionary Guards.
Hussein Khalil and Haider al-Musawi are considered militants – and therefore legitimate targets – so their deaths have not been counted towards the civilian casualty toll of this incident.
@N0_hizbollah on Twitter/X named the third victim, Mahdi, a “Hezbollah official.” However, Mahdi Hussein Al-Khalil’s role in the Hezbollah organisation remains unclear – as Hezbollah operates both a political and a militant wing, it is Mahdi may have been politically, not militantly, involved – so his has a contested civilian status until further information comes to light.
On the evening of June 21, various sources, including Akharin Khabar and Tirdadname, reported that the three men were killed “on the Iraq-Iran border in an airstrike by the [Israeli military].” Following the strike, Twitter/X user @N0_hizbollah posted photos of Mehdi Hussein Khalil and Abu Ali Khalil, referring to Mehdi as “a Hezbollah official.”
Various funeral announcements featured photos of the father and son in military attire. Al-Manar reported that they were “buried at the Jannat al-Zahra cemetery in al-Kafa’at…alongside other resistance martyrs” in a ceremony organised by Hezbollah.
As Mahdi was the only individual reportedly harmed in this incident who wasn’t a militant, but his civilian status is contested, the civilian harm status recorded for this incident has been recorded as ‘weak’. This will be updated should additional information become available.
Where sources identified the belligerent, all sources attributed the strikes to Israeli forces. The sources differed on the nature of the strike, some alleging that it was an airstrike, but others – a drone strike.
Geolocation Notes
Reports of the incident mention a strike in the vicinity of the Iran-Iraq border. Due to the lack of location information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further. The location of this incident will be further specified if more information comes to light.