Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement announced Tuesday it has chosen deputy head Naim Qassem to succeed Hasan Nasrallah as leader after his death in an Israeli strike on south Beirut last month.
“Hezbollah’s (governing) Shura Council agreed to elect… Sheikh Naim Qassem as secretary general of Hezbollah,” the Iran-backed group said in a statement, more than a month after Nasrallah’s killing. Hashem Safieddine, the head of Hezbollah’s executive council, was initially tipped to succeed Nasrallah.
Shortly after Nasrallah’s murder, however, he was also killed in an Israeli strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut.
The 71-year-old Qassem was a founding member of Hezbollah in 1982 and has served as the party’s deputy secretary general since 1991, the year before Nasrallah assumed leadership.
He was born in 1953 in Beirut to a family from the Israeli border hamlet of Kfar Fila.
After Nasrallah mostly disappeared after the group’s 2006 battle with Israel, he was the highest ranking Hezbollah figure to continue appearing in public.
Since Nasrallah’s death in a huge Israeli air strike on September 27, Qassem has made three televised addresses, speaking in more formal Arabic than the colloquial Lebanese favoured by Nasrallah.
