Hezbollah has elected its deputy secretary common, Sheikh Naim Qassem, as its new head, ending a month-long vacuum after the group’s longtime chief Hassan Nasrallah was killed by Israel.
Since Nasrallah’s demise, Qassem has crammed in for him, giving a public tackle earlier this month by which he vowed that Hezbollah would proceed preventing Israel in what it described as a battle of attrition, regardless of painful losses.
On the similar time, Qassem mentioned he supported the efforts in direction of reaching a ceasefire in Lebanon, with out linking the nation’s destiny to a ceasefire in Gaza, which Hezbollah had beforehand mentioned was a precondition to a cessation in hostilities with Israel.
Qassem has been the group’s deputy secretary common since 1991 and one in all its most public-facing officers, usually talking on behalf of the group at rallies and in interviews. Beirut-raised although his household is from south Lebanon, Qassem was at first concerned with the Lebanese Shia Amal motion earlier than turning into a founding member of Hezbollah within the early Nineteen Eighties.
His election has ended a succession disaster inside Hezbollah and is among the many indicators that the group is reconstituting itself after a sequence of blows from Israel. The final presumed successor to Nasrallah, Hashem Safieddine, has been lacking for nearly a month after Hezbollah declared he was killed in Israeli bombing within the southern suburbs of Beirut on 3 October.
Qassem has inherited a bunch that’s on the again foot from a ferocious Israeli offensive and is diminished from the as soon as legendary standing it loved in Lebanon.
Hezbollah has been rocked by explosions that focused its communication units, which injured hundreds of its members final month, and tons of of Israeli strikes focusing on its weapons caches throughout the nation. Nearly all of its senior army management has been killed by Israel during the last three months.
The group is engaged in fierce preventing in south Lebanon with Israeli forces, who’ve been conducting what Israel has described as a “limited” operation alongside the Lebanese-Israel border since 30 September.
Israel has mentioned it has killed tons of of Hezbollah members since then, and the group has stopped issuing public funeral notices for its fighters for operational safety causes. Hezbollah has claimed to have killed 90 Israeli troopers, whereas Israeli media places the determine at round 37.
Shortly after his appointment, the Israeli authorities’s Arabic-language account warned on X that Qassem’s tenure “may be short if he follows in the footsteps” of Nasrallah and Safieddine, and referred to as for Hezbollah to disarm.
Whereas Hezbollah and Israel commerce blows in south Lebanon, Israeli warplanes proceed to bombard swathes of the nation.
Israel carried out greater than 37 airstrikes in Baalbek, within the Bekaa valley, on Monday, killing not less than 67 folks and wounding greater than 120, in keeping with the world’s governor. Greater than two-thirds of the lifeless and wounded had been girls and kids. It was the bloodiest day for the world since preventing between Hezbollah and Israel started a 12 months earlier.
Movies from the Baalbek city of Brital present a avenue with collapsed buildings and smoke plumes emanating from areas the place bombs fell the evening earlier than.
Baalbek is famed for its archaeological websites, chief amongst them the Baalbek temple complicated, designated as a Unesco world heritage website in 1984. Monday evening’s bombing broken one of many historic gates of Baalbek fort, although the inside of the temple complicated was unhurt.
The Bekaa valley is traditionally an space the place Hezbollah enjoys help and the group has weapons caches there. Nonetheless, it is without doubt one of the largest geographic areas of Lebanon and is politically and religiously numerous.
Since Israel began its intense aerial marketing campaign in Lebanon on 23 September, the Bekaa valley has been some of the persistently struck areas, outdoors of south Lebanon.
