Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem has mentioned the armed Lebanese group won’t hand over its weapons, one 12 months after Israel killed his predecessor, Hassan Nasrallah, in an air assault on southern Beirut.
Talking on Saturday to the 1000’s who had gathered at Nasrallah’s tomb in Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, Qassem promised to take care of Hezbollah’s army capabilities, which have been considerably weakened by its current battle with Israel.
“We’ll by no means abandon our weapons, nor will we relinquish them,” he mentioned, including that Hezbollah would proceed to “confront any challenge that serves Israel”.
His feedback come after the brand new Lebanese authorities publicly dedicated to disarming the Iran-backed group.
Within the run-up to the primary anniversary of his charismatic predecessor’s loss of life, tensions soared between Hezbollah supporters and opponents in Lebanon.
Photographs of Nasrallah and his inheritor obvious, Hashem Safieddine, who was killed in an Israeli air strike simply weeks after his boss, have been projected onto rocks off the coast of Beirut this week, regardless of orders from Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam prohibiting it.
On Saturday, 1000’s of males, ladies and youngsters carrying black flocked in direction of Nasrallah’s burial web site, with many carrying portraits of the slain chief. Iran’s Supreme Nationwide Safety Council secretary, Ali Larijani, additionally attended the commemoration.
“We got here right here to inform everybody in Lebanon that Hezbollah remains to be robust,” mentioned Fatima, whose husband was killed within the battle with Israel final September.
Chatting with the AFP information company, Ali Jaafar, a 21-year-old college scholar, mentioned he believed that disarmament of Hezbollah wouldn’t occur.
“Handing over the weapons is the dream of the enemies, the inner and exterior ones – however it should stay only a dream,” he mentioned.
Nasrallah was killed on September 27 final 12 months, when Israel dropped a sequence of bunker buster bombs on a Hezbollah complicated in southern Beirut. He had been answerable for the motion for greater than 30 years.
After Israel started its battle on Gaza following the lethal Hamas assaults on October 7, 2023, Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian folks below assault within the coastal enclave.
A 12 months after becoming a member of the combat in opposition to Israel, Hezbollah was dealt a severe blow when Israel’s intelligence company detonated explosives secretly planted inside 1000’s of pagers utilized by the group’s members to speak. Many Lebanese civilians have been casualties of the indiscriminate pager blasts, together with an eight-year-old woman who was killed.
Because the Israeli army focused and killed Nasrallah and different senior leaders in an enormous aerial bombing marketing campaign, it additionally despatched 1000’s of troops throughout the border to destroy cities, villages and occupy areas of southern Lebanon.
Regardless of a ceasefire settlement to finish the battle that was signed between Lebanon and Israel in November 2024, Israel’s army nonetheless occupies Lebanese territory and continues to conduct air strikes inside Lebanon which have killed many civilians, however which it claims are Hezbollah members.
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