An abandoned wheat field in Rayak, with the Anti-Lebanon mountain range in the background, July 2, 2025. (Credit: Ali Baalbaki/L'Orient-Le Jour)
Contact was lost Wednesday afternoon with Ahmed Ali Shukr, a retired major from General Security and native of Nabi Sheet (Baalbeck), while he was in central Bekaa, local elected officials (mukhtars) from the town said Thursday.
A relative of the retired officer, who is also the mukhtar of Nabi Sheet, Ahmad Mohammad Shukr, told L’Orient-Le Jour on Friday that Ahmad Ali Shukr, acting as a “real estate intermediary,” was kidnapped while “on his way to a meeting that was supposed to bring together the buyer and seller for a land plot in Zahle, near Hamra Plaza. Since then, there has been no contact with him.”
When contacted by our publication, a source within the Lebanese Army stated that, according to their information, “the person in question is considered missing, not kidnapped.”
In a call to the authorities, the Nabi Sheet mukhtars on Thursday urged President Joseph Aoun, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, as well as the interior and defense ministers, to “work to clarify the circumstances of [their] son Ahmad Ali Shukr's disappearance,” with whom “all contact has been lost since Wednesday afternoon, and we have no information about him,” reports our regional correspondent.
They specified that the disappearance occurred in central Bekaa and that “all security services have been informed,” calling on the relevant authorities to “act without delay to shed full light on his fate.”
For its part, the mukhtars' association in eastern Bekaa condemned on Thursday, in a statement, the kidnapping of Shukr and called for his “immediate release.”
It urged Aoun, Berri and Salam, as well as the security forces, to “make every effort to secure his release without delay, in the interest of the country's security and stability.”
“Such an irresponsible act, infringing upon his liberty and his social, human and family security, exposes the security of the nation and its citizens to serious dangers, especially in these exceptional circumstances our country is going through,” the statement said.
The mukhtars also reaffirmed their support for the armed forces and security agencies in the exercise of their missions, calling on relevant authorities to “act quickly to bring the abducted commander back to his family and ensure his safety.”
