Israel said it killed Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in a powerful airstrike in Beirut, prompting Iran to call for the United Nations Security Council to meet over Israeli military’s actions in Lebanon and across the Middle East region.

Tehran:

Iran’s foreign ministry said Saturday the path of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah will continue despite his killing in an Israeli air strike in Beirut, after a year of cross-border clashes between the two sides.

“The glorious path of the leader of the resistance, Hassan Nasrallah, will continue and his sacred goal will be realised in the liberation of Quds (Jerusalem), God willing,” foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said in a post on social media X, mourning Nasrallah’s death.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah group, armed and financed by Iran, on Saturday confirmed Nasrallah had been killed, after Israel said it had “eliminated” him in an air strike a day earlier.

The statement confirmed he was killed with other group members “following the treacherous Zionist strike on the southern suburbs” of Beirut.

Iranian vice president Mohammad Javad Zarif also expressed his condolences, praising Nasrallah as a “symbol of the fight against oppression.”

Hezbollah is listed as terrorist group by the United States.

A black flag for mourning was hoisted at the Shiite Islam holy Imam Reza shrine in Iran’s northeastern city Mashhad, according to the local Tasnim news agency.

Mourners gathered there, waving yellow Hezbollah banners, along with Iranian flags as they chanted, “Death to Israel,” state TV showed.

Lebanon’s health ministry gave a preliminary death count of six dead and 91 wounded from the latest strikes on Beirut’s densely populated southern suburbs since Friday, the fiercest to hit Hezbollah’s stronghold since Israel and the group last went to war in 2006.

Earlier on Saturday, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei condemned what he called an Israeli “massacre” in Lebanon and lambasted the “shortsighted” Israeli policy.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Hezbollah, which has exchanged fire with Israeli forces since October, last went to war with Israel in 2006 and has since expanded its domestic and regional influence, politically and militarily.

Financed and armed by Iran, Hezbollah is the most prominent actor in the so-called axis of resistance — regional pro-Tehran armed groups opposed to Israel that also include Palestinian group Hamas, Iraqi movements, and Yemen’s Huthi rebels.

Since the day after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel that triggered war in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah has launched cross-border attacks from Lebanon seeking to tie up Israeli military resources in support of its Palestinian ally.

Fears of all-out war have spiked after Hezbollah vowed to avenge an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs last month that killed a key commander, Fuad Shukr, and Iran pledged retaliation for the killing in Tehran, blamed on Israel, of Hamas’s political chief Ismail Haniyeh.

Hezbollah-Israel War

Hezbollah, whose name means “Party of God” in Arabic, was founded during the Lebanese civil war after Israel besieged the capital Beirut in 1982, and has since become a key domestic political player.

Created at the initiative of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the Shiite Muslim movement gained its moniker as “the Resistance” by fighting Israeli troops who occupied southern Lebanon until 2000.

Israel and Hezbollah fought a month-long war in July-August 2006 that killed some 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 in Israel, mostly soldiers, after the group kidnapped two Israeli troops in a cross-border raid.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 ended that conflict and called for the Lebanese army and United Nations peacekeepers to be the only armed forces deployed in south Lebanon.

But Hezbollah has maintained a discreet presence there, where it enjoys broad support and where experts say it likely has a network of underground tunnels.

On August 16, the group released a video showing what appeared to be underground tunnels and large missile launchers, without revealing their location.

The group also has a strong presence in the Bekaa valley in east Lebanon near the border with Syria.

Hezbollah has bolstered its powerful arsenal, including with guided missiles, and says it can count on more than 100,000 fighters.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was elected secretary-general in 1992 after Israel assassinated his predecessor, and he rarely appears in public. 

Hezbollah’s Regional Influence

Hezbollah is a key actor in the Middle East, where it plays a central role in the “axis of resistance”. It has supported and trained Iran-backed groups in Iraq and Huthi rebels in Yemen, who since October have claimed attacks on Israel and Israeli-linked shipping interests.

Hezbollah is also present in Syria, where many of its members have fought in support of President Bashar al-Assad in his country’s civil war, with Damascus also an ally of Tehran.

Domestically, Hezbollah is the only Lebanese faction to have retained its weapons after the country’s 1975-1990 civil conflict, doing so in the name of “resistance” against Israel.

It is now a key political player, though detractors have accused it of being a “state within a state”.

Political deadlock between Hezbollah allies and their adversaries since late 2022 has prevented the election of a new president, in a country experiencing a grinding economic crisis.

Hezbollah’s Services

Founded in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, Hezbollah has become predominant in all Shiite Muslim areas of Lebanon, while its key religious and financial institutions are based in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

The movement runs an extensive social services network, complete with schools, hospitals, emergency responders and a wide range of charitable organisations serving its supporters.

Its trademark yellow flags and huge portraits of Nasrallah, along with pictures of dead commanders, fighters and “axis of resistance” figures, adorn areas of the country where it is popular.

The United States has considered Hezbollah a “terrorist” organisation for years, blaming it for a series of bombings and hijackings in the 1980s, including one targeting US Marines in Beirut. The European Union applies the classification to the group’s armed wing.

In 2022, a UN-backed court sentenced two Hezbollah members in absentia to life imprisonment for a huge Beirut bombing in 2005 that killed Lebanon’s former premier Rafic Hariri.