Hizbollah appoints new leader after Nasrallah assassination

Lebanon’s Hizbollah has named former deputy leader Naim Qassem to be its new chief as the group tries to reorganise following weeks of Israeli attacks that have killed many of its leaders and left it in disarray.

Hizbollah’s Shura Council, its main decision-making body, chose Qassem as its secretary-general, the militant group said on Tuesday, a month after the assassination of veteran leader Hassan Nasrallah in a massive Israeli air strike in southern Beirut.

It said the group would “keep the flame of the resistance lit . . . until victory is achieved”.

Nasrallah’s heir apparent Hashem Safieddine was killed a few days after the group’s leader of three decades in an Israeli air and ground offensive in Lebanon that has decimated much of Hizbollah’s senior ranks.

Like Nasrallah, 71-year-old Qassem does not have a history of battlefield experience but rose through the ranks of the movement’s executive branches, becoming one of the group’s most important religious scholars and holding the post of deputy secretary-general since 1991. He was beaten to the top job by Nasrallah after Israeli assassinated former leader Ibrahim Mussawi in 1992.

Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant reacted to Qassem’s selection by describing him on X as a “temporary appointment” and suggesting he would not be leader “for long”, an apparent threat referring to the recent string of high-level assassinations.

Large areas of southern Lebanon have been destroyed since Israel intensified its campaign against the Iran-backed militant group, which began firing into Israel days after Hamas’s October 7 attack from Gaza last year.

Lebanese authorities said the death toll in Lebanon from more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hizbollah had risen to 2,710 — nearly 700 of those women and children. The vast majority of casualties have occurred in the past month.

More than 90 Israeli soldiers and civilians have been killed by Hizbollah fire over the past year in northern Israel and during the Israeli incursion into southern Lebanon, launched late last month, according to Israeli authorities.

Hizbollah’s announcement on Tuesday followed an intense wave of Israeli bombardment overnight that killed at least 60 people and wounded dozens in eastern Lebanon, the health ministry in Beirut said.

Israel also continued its attacks on Gaza to the south, killing scores of people in a building housing displaced Palestinians.

The strikes in Lebanon hit the north-eastern district of Baalbek, which is home to ancient Roman ruins, as well as about a dozen towns and villages in the wider Bekaa Valley. The deadliest was in Sahl Allak in the Baalbek district, where 16 people died, the ministry said.

Hizbollah holds sway over many of the areas targeted late on Monday, which have come under frequent fire from Israel’s military in recent weeks.

In a post on X on Tuesday, Baalbek governor Bachir Khodr said it was the “most violent day” the area had experienced since the start of the hostilities, adding that at least 15 people were still under rubble.

Israel’s military also carried out successive air strikes on the coastal city of Tyre, the south’s second-most populated settlement, causing widespread destruction along the city waterfront and in residential areas.

No casualties were reported, probably because many in the city — which had been a refuge for thousands of displaced people — had heeded Israel’s threats to evacuate in recent days.

But the attacks on Tyre fuelled fears that Israeli targets now include Amal, a powerful Shia political party allied to Hizbollah that has a strong presence in the city.

Amal leader Nabih Berri has been the speaker of Lebanon’s parliament for more than three decades and is the main interlocutor for the US, western and Arab states that have been trying to negotiate an end to the conflict.

Following the strikes on Tyre, the Israeli military said they had targeted “weapons and anti-tank missile depots, military buildings, and observation posts of various Hizbollah units, including the Aziz unit”.

The Aziz unit, one of Hizbollah’s three military branches, oversees operations in the western sector of southern Lebanon.

Israeli forces continued to clash with Hizbollah at several points along the border. On Monday, Israel’s military released footage of its chief of staff Herzi Halevi touring what it said was a massive underground Hizbollah bunker in an unnamed southern Lebanese village near the Israeli border. 

“The enemy that was here was eliminated, and now the mission is to destroy it completely; there can’t be anything left here that [the enemy] returns to and operates from,” Halevi said. The Israeli military said it subsequently destroyed the complex. 

More than 200 rockets and drones have been fired by Hizbollah from Lebanon at northern Israel since Monday, according to Israel’s military. An attack drone was also launched by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, which hit the southern Israeli port city of Ashkelon.

One Israeli was killed in northern Israel on Tuesday morning when a rocket struck a home in the town of Maalot-Tarshiha.

A rocket hit Lebanon’s UN peacekeeping force headquarters in the southern village of Naqoura Tuesday afternoon, setting part of the building on fire and causing minor injuries among peacekeepers.

Unifil said the rocket, which was fired from north of the headquarters, was probably launched by Hizbollah or an affiliated group. The Austrian defence ministry said eight of its soldiers were injured and condemned the attack. 

The attacks came as Israel is fighting on multiple fronts, with its forces still battling Hamas in Gaza. 

In north Gaza, 93 people were killed or missing after an Israeli strike on a five-storey building where displaced Palestinians were sheltering, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Additional reporting by Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut