BEIRUT: The leader of Hezbollah said yesterday that his group was determined to battle ultra-hardline Sunni Muslims who seized land in Syria and Iraq and predicted they would be defeated across the region.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah also said his Lebanese Shia group remained ready for any future war with Israel despite sending hundreds of fighters to support President Bashar Al Assad’s forces in Syria.
His remarks come days after an Israeli army general said the Jewish state believed that Hezbollah had probably dug tunnels across from Lebanon in preparation for any future war although it had no conclusive evidence.
Nasrallah was speaking to tens of thousands of his supporters who flocked to the streets in Beirut’s southern suburbs to commemorate the annual Ashura rituals.
“These takfiris have no future.. (they) will be defeated in all regions, all countries .. And we will have the honour of being among those who took part in defeating them,” he said to the crowd, to chants of “we sacrifice our souls for you Nasrallah”.
“Takfiri” is a term for a hardline Sunni Muslim who sees other Muslims as infidels, often as a justification for fighting or killing them. The Islamic State group, which controls parts of Iraq and Syria, is considered among the takfiri groups Nasrallah was referring to.
Dressed in black, people of all ages marched through the streets of Hezbollah’s stronghold beating their chests and chanting: “We sacrifice our souls for you Hussein,” referring to Imam Hussein who was killed in a battle 1,300 years ago against the army of Umayyad Caliph Yizid.
Security for Ashura in Lebanon this year has been especially tight, after Sunni militants from Syria attacked areas in northern Lebanon and took soldiers hostage.
Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria has stirred tensions in Lebanon, a religiously and ethnically-mixed country where a delicate power sharing system between different sects has been in place since the end of a 1975-1990 civil war.
The group lost some popularity in the Arab world when it entered the Syria crisis. It said its fighters were entering the conflict to defend Shia shrines and later said it was fighting the jihadis to deter them from coming into Lebanon.
“The Israelis imagined that the developments in the region, particularly in Syria, will weaken the resistance... and would distract it from preparations (for a future war) and would drain it,” he told supporters via a video link. “I tell you today, that the resistance is stronger than before and is more developed and has more experience,” he said. The group, created in the 1980s to fight Israeli occupation in Lebanon, fought a 33-day war with Israel in 2006 in which it fired thousands of rockets that hit deep into Israel.
Residents of northern Israel have at times reported underground noises suggesting that guerrillas were burrowing across the frontier in a new tactic. The Israeli military says searches it has carried out have turned up nothing. There have been occasional attacks along the border in recent weeks, however, including a roadside bomb planted by Hezbollah that wounded an Israeli soldier. Israel responded by firing artillery shells into southern Lebanon.
“Yes, (in future war) you should close your ports, close your airports. You will not find an area across the occupied Palestine which our rockets can not reach. Anything you can think of, you Zionists, count it in your calculations.”
Reuters
