Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement on Tuesday announced the emergence of its 71-year-old deputy head, Naim Qassem to succeed Hasan Nasrallah, it’s former leader who was killed in an Israeli strike in Beirut last month.
The group disclosed this in a statement disclosing that “Hezbollah’s (governing) Shura Council agreed to elect Sheikh Naim Qassem as Secretary General of Hezbollah.”
The movement pledged “the flame of resistance burning” until victory was achieved against Israel after an all-out war that erupted on September 23.
A source close to Hezbollah said Qassem was elected by the five-member Shura Council, the group’s main decision-making body, two days before Tuesday’s announcement.
The source, who pleaded anonymity said a new Shura Council would be elected after the end of the war.
The council may then opt to elect a new leader or keep Qassem in the top post, the source added.
Qassem, a member of the group’s governing Shura Council, had long operated in the shadows of Nasrallah, a towering leader who was one of the most enigmatic and influential figures in the Middle East.
The head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council, Hashem Safieddine was initially tipped to succeed Nasrallah but he was also killed in an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs shortly after Nasrallah’s killing.
Qassem was one of Hezbollah’s founders in 1982 and had been the party’s deputy secretary general since 1991, the year before Nasrallah took the helm of the movement.
He was born in Beirut in 1953 to a family from the village of Kfar Fila on the border with Israel.
He was the most senior Hezbollah official to continue making public appearances after Nasrallah largely went into hiding following the group’s 2006 war with Israel.
Since the death of Nasrallah on September 27, Qassem has made three televised addresses, speaking in more formal Arabic than the colloquial Lebanese favoured by Nasrallah.
The conflict has claimed over 1,700 lives in Lebanon since September 23, according to an AFP count of health ministry statistics.
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