Since the last war in 2006 between Israel and its formation, the powerful leader of Hezbollah had lived in hiding to escape the Israeli army. But on Friday she managed to locate Hassan Nasrallah and kill him.
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The powerful pro-Iranian Islamist group confirmed on Saturday that its secretary general had been killed the day before in a violent Israeli strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut, the movement’s stronghold.
A sworn enemy of Israel, he had rarely appeared in public since the 2006 war, and his place of residence was kept secret.
However, he received visitors, including the leaders of allied Palestinian groups, who published photos of their meetings.
The journalists and personalities who met him claim to have been driven by Hezbollah in cars with thick curtains, and with reinforced security measures, to an unidentifiable location.
Hassan Nasrallah, however, regularly gave a speech broadcast live, to which the entire country was suspended.
AFP
He was the most powerful man in Lebanon, deciding war or peace in the country, at the head of an impressive, heavily armed militia.
This man of religion, aged 64, was the subject of a veritable cult of personality among his supporters, particularly within the Shiite Muslim community from which he comes.
He had been the charismatic leader of Hezbollah since 1992, when he succeeded Abbas Moussaoui, also assassinated by Israel.
Since then, he had patiently made Hezbollah, armed and financed by Iran, evolve into an essential political force, represented in Parliament and in the government.
At the same time, he had developed the arsenal of his formation, which according to him has 100,000 fighters, and had powerful weapons, including high-precision missiles.
“Divine Victory”
Hezbollah is the only formation to have retained its weapons at the end of the Lebanese War (1975-1990) in the name of “resistance against Israel”, whose army gradually withdrew from the country until evacuating it. , in May 2000, the south, after 22 years of occupation.
Throughout the clashes between his men and the Israeli army, Hassan Nasrallah consolidated his stature, and gained respect with the death, in 1997, of his eldest son Hadi in combat.
The summer 2006 war with Israel, which lasted 33 days, allowed him to display the power of his movement, his fighters standing up to the Israeli army.
This war caused the death of 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.
Hassan Nasrallah proclaimed a “divine victory” at the end of this war, gaining a hero’s profile in the Arab world.
But in Lebanon, he alienated several camps, when his party was accused of being involved in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in 2005, then when his armed men briefly took control of the capital in May 2008.
Regional role
Hassan Nasrallah has increased his influence not only in Lebanon, but also in the region.
In 2013, he announced that he had intervened militarily in neighboring Syria to support the regime of Bashar al-Assad, entangled in the civil war triggered by the repression of a popular uprising in 2011 which degenerated into an armed insurrection.
Enjoying the total trust of Iranian leaders, he trains and supports movements close to Tehran in the region.
Hezbollah is today the “crown jewel” of Iran’s allies in the region, united within an “axis of resistance” that includes armed groups in Iraq, Yemen’s Houthi rebels as well as Palestinian Hamas.
Since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip between Hamas and Israel, Hassan Nasrallah has opened the southern Lebanese front to support his Palestinian ally.
Coming from a modest family
Hassan Nasrallah was born on August 31, 1960 into a modest family of nine children, in the former “poverty belt” which surrounded Beirut.
His family comes from the village of Bazouriyé in southern Lebanon.
As a teenager, he studied theology in the holy Shiite city of Najaf in Iraq, but had to leave during the wave of anti-Shiite repression by then Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Returning to Lebanon, he became involved in the Shiite Amal movement, but seceded during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 1982 to become part of the founding core of Hezbollah, created under the leadership of the Guardians of the Iranian revolution.
Married with five children, Hassan Nasrallah spoke Persian fluently.
He wore the black turban of the Sayyed, the descendants of the prophet Mohammed to whom he claimed his affiliation.
