Hezbollah says it will continue fighting Israel despite leader's death

Photo: Kawnat Haju Agence France-Presse Smoke rises after an Israeli strike on a village near the city of Tyre, southern Lebanon, on September 29, 2024.

Lisa Golden – Agence France-Presse and Benoît Finck – Agence France-Presse respectively in Beirut and Jerusalem

Published at 6:47 AM Updated at 8:45 AM

• Middle East

Hezbollah said Monday it would continue its fight against Israel in “support” of Gaza and said it was “ready” to face an Israeli ground operation in Lebanon, despite the death of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and the intense blows it is suffering.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that the elimination of Hassan Nasrallah, killed Friday in a powerful Israeli strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut, was “an important step, but not the last.”

“To ensure the return of communities in northern Israel, we will use all our capabilities, and you are part of it,” he assured soldiers deployed on the Israeli-Lebanese border.

After a year of exchanges of fire on the border, on the sidelines of the war in the Gaza Strip, Israel has since mid-September moved the heart of its military operations to the north, in order to weaken Hezbollah and allow the return of tens of thousands of residents displaced by rocket fire. incessant.

In a televised speech, Hezbollah’s number two, Naim Qassem, said Monday that the Iranian-backed Lebanese Islamist movement would choose a successor to Hassan Nasrallah “at the first opportunity.”

Despite an intense campaign of airstrikes conducted over the past week by Israel and the death of several leaders of the movement, he said Monday that Hezbollah was “ready” to repel a possible Israeli ground offensive.

Naim Qassem added that his movement, an ally of Hamas, would continue its fight against Israel “in support of Gaza,” where the Israeli army has been leading an offensive since October 7, 2023 in response to the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement.

Israel, which has deployed reinforcements to its northern border with Lebanon, had once again promised, after the death of Hassan Nasrallah, to fight his “enemies” and to “eliminate” them wherever they are.

Naim Qassem claimed that Nasrallah was killed along with four other people, denying the deaths of around twenty Hezbollah members announced by Israel. He did not specify when his successor would be designated, nor when his funeral would take place.

In an explosive regional context, Iran, Israel's sworn enemy, assured on Monday that it would not “deploy” fighters in Lebanon.

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« Unjustly Targeted »

On Monday, Hamas announced that its leader in Lebanon, Fatah Sharif Abu al-Amin, had been killed in a strike in the south of the country. The Israeli army confirmed that it had “eliminated” him.

After several bombings in recent days on the southern suburbs of Beirut, a stronghold of Hezbollah, a strike targeted a building in the center of the capital on Monday, for the first time in a year of military escalation.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a secular left-wing Palestinian organization classified as terrorist by Israel and the European Union, announced the death of three of its members.

The Israeli army has not commented on this information.

According to a Lebanese security source, “at least four people were killed in an Israeli drone strike targeting an apartment belonging to Jamaa Islamiya,” a Lebanese Sunni Islamist group that supports Hezbollah in its operations carried out from Lebanon on northern Israel “in support” of Hamas.

The strike targeted a building in the Cola neighborhood, one floor of which was destroyed, according to AFP images.

Woke up by a “huge noise,” Mohammed al-Hoss, a resident of the neighborhood, rushed into the street in his pajamas. “People were screaming and you could see the dust rising from the building next door,” said the 41-year-old.

His building, which also housed people who fled the bombings in other parts of Lebanon, was damaged. “We are being targeted unfairly for something we have nothing to do with. Our country cannot afford to go to war. Our country is in a miserable state,” he added.

A million displaced

In total, more than a thousand people have been killed in Lebanon since mid-September, according to the authorities. The death toll from an Israeli strike Sunday near the southern city of Sidon has risen to 45, according to the Health Ministry.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati said that up to a million people may have been displaced by the Israeli bombardment.

Before dawn on Monday, the army announced that it had struck dozens of Hezbollah targets in the Bekaa region of eastern Lebanon, including “dozens of launchers and buildings where weapons were stored.”

According to Lebanese authorities, six Hezbollah medics were killed in a strike in the region.

The army also said it had “succeeded in intercepting a suspicious air target that had entered Israeli territory from Lebanon” on Monday morning.

Saudi Arabia, which is very influential in Lebanon, called on Monday for respect for the “sovereignty and territorial integrity” of the country, expressing its “great concern” over the intensification of the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, while the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip continues.

In the Palestinian territory, which has been bombed relentlessly for a year in response to the October 7 attack, the number of Israeli strikes has, however, dropped significantly in recent days, according to AFP journalists who reported three or four strikes during the night from Sunday to Monday.

The death of Hassan Nasrallah, considered the most powerful man in Lebanon, constitutes a major victory for Israel against Iran and its allies.

Despite these hard blows, the movement continues to fire rockets at northern Israel.

“We are afraid that there will be a total escalation,” said Matan Sofer, a resident of the Israeli town of Rosh Pina, about thirty kilometers from the Lebanese border.