BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Hezbollah is preparing for a massive turnout for the funeral on Sunday of its slain leader Hassan Nasrallah, an opportunity for a show of strength by the Iran-backed group after a bruising war with Israel.
Nasrallah’s death nearly five months ago in a huge Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs left Hezbollah supporters in disbelief and sent shockwaves across Lebanon and the region.
The country will stop for Sunday’s funeral, to be held at 1:00 p.m. (1100 GMT) at the Camille Chamoun sports stadium on the capital’s outskirts.
Hezbollah has announced strict security measures and urged security forces to help manage crowds that are expected to number in the tens of thousands, with people pouring in from Hezbollah strongholds across the country, as well as from abroad.
Hassan Wehbe, 60, an electrician in Beirut’s southern suburbs, said the funeral would be “a historic day.”
“There will be huge participation. Israel will see that we are not afraid,” he said.
Hezbollah has invited senior Lebanese officials including the president.
Its key foreign backer Iran has said it will participate “at a high level,” without specifying who will attend.
Nicholas Blanford, a Beirut-based Hezbollah expert and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said it was important for Hezbollah “to be able to demonstrate that they haven’t been cowed — that they are still a popular force” within the Shiite community.
The funeral “is going to be exactly the event for that,” he told AFP.
The ceremony is expected to last around an hour, including a speech by current leader Naim Qassem, who has called for a huge turnout.
A procession will follow to Nasrallah’s burial site near the airport road, now lined with yellow Hezbollah flags and images of him and other slain Hezbollah figures.
Civil aviation authorities said Beirut airport will close exceptionally and flights will be suspended from midday until 4:00 pm.
The US embassy has urged Americans to avoid the area.
Hezbollah was battered by more than a year of hostilities with Israel that culminated in two months of full-blown war before a ceasefire took effect on November 27.
After Nasrallah was killed on September 27, the group delayed his funeral due to security concerns.
The ceremony will also be for Hashem Safieddine, who was chosen to succeed Nasrallah before being killed in a later Israeli strike.
Safieddine will be buried on Monday in his southern hometown of Deir Qanun Al-Nahr.
The charismatic, bespectacled Nasrallah has long enjoyed cult status among his supporters.
For Ahmed Hallani, 35, taking part is “a religious and moral duty.”
Nasrallah is “our leader and the leader of our victories. We will stay beside him, alive or dead,” he said.
Iraqi Airways and Lebanon’s Middle East Airlines have increased services between Baghdad and Beirut ahead of the funeral.
Representatives of Iraq’s main pro-Iran factions are to participate, while several Iraqi lawmakers are expected to attend privately.
One of Hezbollah’s founders in 1982, Nasrallah was elected secretary-general a decade later after Israel killed his predecessor.
He won renown in the Arab world after Israel withdrew its troops from south Lebanon under relentless Hezbollah attack in May 2000, ending 22 years of occupation of the border strip.
Nasrallah’s years at the helm saw the group expand from guerrilla faction into the most powerful political force in Lebanon, only to be battered in the latest conflict.
Lebanon has said more than 4,000 people have been killed since hostilities began in October 2023, most of them after Israel ramped up its campaign in September, later sending in ground troops.
Among the dead are hundreds of Hezbollah fighters and a slew of senior commanders.
Israel has missed two deadlines to complete its withdrawal under the ceasefire agreement, and still has troops deployed in five places on the Lebanese side of the border after its latest pullback earlier this week.
Hezbollah readies massive funeral for slain leader Nasrallah
https://arab.news/9drtr
Hezbollah readies massive funeral for slain leader Nasrallah
- Hezbollah has announced strict security measures and urged security forces to help manage crowds
- Hassan Wehbe, 60, an electrician in Beirut’s southern suburbs, said the funeral would be “a historic day“
US says airstrike killed Daesh official in Syria
WASHINGTON: The US military announced Thursday that a recent airstrike had killed an Daesh group official in northwest Syria.
In a post to social media, US Central Command said its forces “conducted a precision airstrike in northwest Syria killing Rakhim Boev, a Syria-based Daesh official,” using another name for Daesh.
The post on X said Boev was “involved in planning external operations threatening US citizens, our partners, and civilians.”
The accompanying image depicts an SUV vehicle with a bashed-in windshield and roof.
AFP previously reported that two people were killed in separate drone strikes Tuesday, on a car and a motorcycle, in the northwestern bastion of the Islamist former rebels who now head the Syrian government.
A call to CENTCOM seeking confirmation that the incidents are related was not immediately returned.
The twin drone strikes in the Idlib region mirror the US-led coalition’s past strikes on jihadists in the area.
During a meeting in Riyadh last month, US President Donald Trump called on his Syrian counterpart Ahmed Al-Sharaa to help Washington prevent a resurgence by Daesh.
Returning Syrian refugees cut global displaced total
- UN believes 1.5m from abroad and 2m internally displaced will be home by the end of 2025
GENEVA: Refugees returning to Syria have cut the global total of displaced people from a record peak at the end of 2024, the UN said on Thursday.
More than 500,000 have returned from abroad and 1.2 million internally displaced people have gone back to their home areas since Bashar Assad was deposed in December. The UN refugee agency estimates 1.5 million from abroad and 2 million internally displaced will return by the end of 2025.
Worldwide, a record 123.2 million were forcibly displaced by last December, but the total had fallen to 122.1 million by the end of April. The main drivers of displacement were conflicts in Sudan, Myanmar and Ukraine.
“We are living in a time of intense volatility ... with modern warfare creating a fragile, harrowing landscape marked by acute human suffering,” UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi said. “We must redouble our efforts to search for peace and find long-lasting solutions for refugees and others forced to flee their homes.”
Syria condemns ‘blatant violation’ of sovereignty after Israeli incursion
- One person killed and 7 captured during the pre-dawn operation in Beit Jin, Interior Ministry says
DAMASCUS: Syria’s Interior Ministry condemned an Israeli incursion in southern Syria, saying Israeli forces killed one person and abducted seven others, calling it a “blatant violation” of the country’s sovereignty.
“We affirm that these repeated provocations constitute a blatant violation of the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that “these practices cannot lead the region to stability and will only result in further tension and turmoil.”
The Israeli military said those detained during the pre-dawn raid on Beit Jin were suspected of planning attacks against Israel, and that weapons also were found in the area.
They were taken back to Israel for questioning, the military said.
One person was killed and seven captured in the operation, Syria’s Interior Ministry said, while the father of the young man killed said he had a history of mental illness.
Since the fall of President Bashar Assad’s government in early December, Israeli forces have moved into several areas in southern Syria and conducted hundreds of airstrikes throughout the country, destroying much of the assets of the Syrian army.
Local broadcaster Syria TV described Thursday’s raid as being carried out by about 100 Israeli troops who stormed Beit Jin, near the border with Lebanon, and called out the names of several people targeted for arrest through loudspeakers.
Syria’s Interior Ministry said such incursions spike tensions in the region.
“Such repeated provocative acts are a flagrant violation of Syria’s sovereignty,” the ministry said in a statement.
Village official Walid Okasha said that Israeli troops had entered the outskirts of Beit Jin in recent months, but that this was the first time they entered the center of the village.
He added that Thursday’s operation came four days after an Israeli drone strike hit a car in the village, inflicting casualties.
“They came targeting specific people,” said Okasha, who denied that Hamas members were in the village.
He said the seven people taken to Israel were all Syrians and that two of them were members of the country’s new security forces.
He said the man who was killed suffered from mental illness.
Ahmad Hammadi identified the victim as his son and told the AP that he had a history of schizophrenia.
He said his son was shot dead in front of his home, and that he had no links to Hamas.
He said two of the captured men were his nephews. Hussein Safadi said his two sons, Ahmad, 32, and Mohammed, 34, were captured, adding that his younger son, who raises goats, had lived in Lebanon for years until recently.
He said his younger son was a member of the armed opposition against Assad and recently joined the security forces of the new authorities. As for why Israeli forces seized his sons, “we don’t know the reasons,” Safadi said.
During a visit to France last month, Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa said that his country is holding indirect talks with Israel to prevent hostilities from getting out of control.
Egypt blocks activists aiming to march to Gaza to draw attention to humanitarian crisis
- Egyptian authorities and activists both said Thursday that people planning to march across the Sinai Peninsula were deported
RABAT: Egypt blocked activists planning to take part in a march to Gaza, halting their attempt to reach the border and challenge Israel’s blockade on humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territory before it could begin.
Egyptian authorities and activists both said Thursday that people planning to march across the Sinai Peninsula were deported.
To draw attention to the humanitarian crisis afflicting people in Gaza, marchers have for months planned to trek about 30 miles (about 50 kilometers) from the city of Arish to Egypt’s border with the enclave on Sunday to “create international moral and media pressure” to open the crossing at Rafah and lift a blockade that has prevented aid from entering.
Saif Abu Keshek, one of the activists organizing the march, said that about 200 activists — mostly Algerians and Moroccans — were detained or deported.
But those arriving to the Cairo International Airport on Thursday afternoon were allowed into Egypt, the Spain-based activist added. Organizers have not received approval from Egyptian authorities for Sunday’s march and were evaluating how to proceed, he said.
An Egyptian official on Thursday said more than three dozen activists, mostly carrying European passports, were deported upon their arrival at the Cairo International Airport in the past two days.
The official said the activists aimed to travel to Northern Sinai “without obtaining required authorizations.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.
