Who was Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader killed by Israeli airstrike? – National

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Who was Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader ******* by ******** airstrike? – National

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, whose ****** was announced on Saturday, led the Lebanese group through decades of conflict with *******, overseeing its transformation into a military force with regional sway and becoming one of the most prominent ***** figures in generations — with Iranian backing.

Hezbollah said in a statement that Nasrallah had been *******, but it did not say how. The ******** military said earlier it had ******* Nasrallah in an airstrike on the group’s central headquarters in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Friday.

Nasrallah’s ****** deals a huge ***** to the group. He will be remembered among his supporters for standing up to ******* and defying the ******* States. To enemies, he was head of a ********** organization and a proxy for Iran’s Shi’ite Islamist theocracy in its tussle for influence in the Middle East.

His regional influence was on display over nearly a year of conflict ignited by the Gaza war, as Hezbollah entered the fray by ******* on ******* from southern Lebanon in support of its ************ ally ******, and Yemeni and Iraqi groups followed suit, operating under the umbrella of “The Axis of Resistance.”

Story continues below advertisement

“We are facing a great battle,” Nasrallah said in an Aug. 1 speech at the ******** of Hezbollah’s top military commander, Fuad Shukr, who was ******* in an ******** strike on the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut.

A televised speech by Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah is transmitted on large screens as fighters and mourners attend the ******** ceremony of slain top commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut’s southern suburbs on August 1, 2024. Hezbollah on August 1 mourned Shukr, whose body was recovered from the rubble of a July 30 ******** strike in south Beirut that also ******* five civilians, three women and two children, and injured dozens, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, as fears mounted of a wider conflict in the region.

Khaled Desouki / AFP via Getty Images

Yet when thousands of Hezbollah members were injured and dozens *******, when their communications devices exploded in an apparent ******** ******* last week, that battle began to turn against his group.

Responding to the attacks on Hezbollah’s communications network in a Sept. 19 speech, Nasrallah vowed to punish *******.

“This is a reckoning that will come, its nature, its size, how and where? This is certainly what we will keep to ourselves and in the narrowest circle even within ourselves,” he said.

He had not given a broadcast address since then.

Story continues below advertisement

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png">

1:59
Pager attacks ‘declaration of war’: Hezbollah

Previous Video

Next Video

******* has meanwhile dramatically escalated its attacks, ******** several senior Hezbollah commanders in targeted strikes and unleashing a massive bombardment in Hezbollah-controlled areas of Lebanon, which has ******* hundreds of people.

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==

Get breaking National news

For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen.

Recognized even by his enemies as a skilled orator, Nasrallah’s speeches were followed by friend and foe alike.

Wearing the ****** turban of a sayyed, or a descendent of the Prophet Mohammad, Nasrallah used his addresses to rally Hezbollah’s base but also to deliver carefully calibrated threats, often wagging his finger as he did so.

He became secretary general of Hezbollah in 1992 aged just 35, the public face of a once-shadowy group founded by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 1982 to ****** ******** occupation forces.

******* ******* his predecessor, Sayyed Abbas al-Musawi, in a helicopter *******. Nasrallah led Hezbollah when its guerrillas finally drove ******** forces from southern Lebanon in 2000, ending an 18-year occupation.

Story continues below advertisement

Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, addresses media on August 1, 1993 in the southern suburb of Beirut. Nasrallah was elected secretary-general of Hezbollah in 1992 after ******* ******* his predecessor Abbas al-Musawi, his wife and three-year-old daughter in an air strike.

Joseph Barrack/AFP via Getty Images

‘Divine Victory’

Conflict with ******* largely defined his leadership. He declared “Divine Victory” in 2006 after Hezbollah waged 34 days of war with *******, winning the respect of many ordinary ****** who had grown up watching ******* defeat their armies.

But he became an increasingly divisive figure in Lebanon and the wider ***** world as Hezbollah’s area of operations widened to Syria and beyond, reflecting an intensifying conflict between Shi’ite Iran and U.S.-allied Sunni ***** monarchies in the Gulf.

While Nasrallah painted Hezbollah’s engagement in Syria — where it fought in support of President Bashar al-Assad during the civil war — as a campaign against jihadists, critics accused the group of becoming part of a regional sectarian conflict.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (C) holds a reception in honour of the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (L) with the presence of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah (R) on February 25, 2010 in Damascus, Syria.

Jordan Pix/Getty Images

At home, Nasrallah’s critics said Hezbollah’s regional adventurism imposed an unbearable price on Lebanon, leading once friendly Gulf ****** to shun the country — a factor that contributed to its

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

Story continues below advertisement

In the years following the 2006 war, Nasrallah walked a tightrope over a new conflict with *******, hoarding Iranian rockets in a carefully measured contest of threat and counter threat.

The Gaza war, ignited by the Oct. 7 ****** ******* on *******, prompted Hezbollah’s worst conflict with ******* since 2006, costing the group hundreds of its fighters including top commanders.

After years of entanglements elsewhere, the conflict put renewed focus on Hezbollah’s historic struggle with *******.

Trending Now

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==

Charge your phone overnight? Here’s why Montreal ***** officials say to stop

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==

Hurricane Helene photos show Florida reeling from ‘catastrophic’ surge

“We are here paying the price for our front of support for Gaza, and for the ************ people, and our adoption of the ************ cause,” Nasrallah said in the Aug. 1 speech.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png">

2:05
Who is Hezbollah? A closer look at its role in Lebanon

Previous Video

Next Video

Nasrallah grew up in Beirut’s impoverished Karantina district. His family hail from Bazouriyeh, a village in the Lebanon’s predominantly Shi’ite south which today forms Hezbollah’s political heartland.

Story continues below advertisement

He was part of a generation of young Lebanese Shi’ites whose political

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

was shaped by Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Before leading the group, he used to spend nights with frontline guerrillas fighting *******’s occupying army. His teenage son, Hadi, ***** in battle in 1997, a loss that gave him legitimacy among his core Shi’ite constituency in Lebanon.

An undated picture shows Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (R) with his 18-year-old son Hadi, who was ******* in clashes with ******** soldiers in south Lebanon September 12, 1997. An ******** soldier was ******* on September 18, 1997 and three others wounded in a series of coordinated attacks by Hezbollah guerrillas on ******** positions in southern Lebanon.

AFP via Getty Images

Powerful enemies

He had a track record of threatening powerful enemies.

As regional tensions escalated after the eruption of the Gaza war, Nasrallah issued a thinly veiled warning to U.S. warships in the Mediterranean, telling them: “We have prepared for the fleets with which you threaten us.”

In 2020, Nasrallah vowed that U.S. soldiers would leave the region in coffins after

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

was ******* in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq.

Story continues below advertisement

He expressed fierce opposition to Saudi Arabia over its armed intervention in Yemen, where, with U.S. and other allied support, Riyadh sought to roll back the Iran-aligned Houthis.

As regional tensions rose in 2019 following an ******* on Saudi oil facilities, he said Saudi Arabia and the ******* ***** Emirates should halt the Yemen war to protect themselves.

“Don’t bet on a war against Iran because they will ******** you,” he said in a message directed at Riyadh.

More on World
More videos

On Nasrallah’s watch, Hezbollah also clashed with adversaries at home in Lebanon.

In 2008, he accused the Lebanese government — backed at the time by the West and Saudi Arabia — of declaring war by moving to ban his group’s internal communication network. Nasrallah vowed to “cut off the hand” that tried to dismantle it.

It prompted four days of civil war pitting Hezbollah against Sunni and Druze fighters, and the Shi’ite group to take over half the capital Beirut.

He strongly denied any Hezbollah involvement in the 2005 ************** of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, after a U.N.-backed tribunal indicted four members of the group.

Nasrallah rejected the tribunal —which in 2020 eventually convicted three of them in absentia over the ************** — as a tool in the hands of Hezbollah’s enemies.

Story continues below advertisement

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png">

2:02
******* rejects Lebanon ceasefire proposal

Previous Video

Next Video

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#Hassan #Nasrallah #Hezbollah #leader #******* #******** #airstrike #National

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up