Hezbollah leader promises response to Israel’s strike killing top commander | News

Naim Qassim described the killing of Haitham Tabatabai as a ‘heinous crime’ and said that Hezbollah has the right to respond.

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem says the group has the right to respond to Israel’s killing of its top military chief in an attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs last week.

In a televised speech on Friday, Qassem called the killing of Haitham Ali Tabatabai “a blatant aggression and a heinous crime”, and said the Lebanese armed group “has the right to respond, and we will set a time for it.”

Qasim said, “Do you expect war later? It is possible, sometimes. Yes, it is a possibility, and there is also a possibility of no war.”

Qassim did not explicitly say what the group’s role would be in any new war, but said Lebanon should formulate a plan to confront Israel that relies on “its army and its people.”

The Hezbollah leader also said he hoped Pope Leo’s upcoming visit to Lebanon would “play a role in bringing peace and ending (Israeli) aggression”.

Qassim stressed that Hezbollah respected the November 2024 ceasefire, which sought to end more than a year of fighting with Israel, and called for an end to ongoing Israeli attacks on Lebanon.

Qasim said Tabatabai was in a meeting with four of his colleagues “to prepare for future actions” when he was attacked.

Responding to Qassim’s speech, Israeli military spokesman Avichai Adraee said the Lebanese Army’s efforts to seize Hezbollah’s weapons in the south of the country were “inadequate”.

“Hezbollah continues to manipulate them and work covertly to maintain its arsenal,” Adraee said in a post on X.

But Hezbollah has said it is unwilling to give up its weapons as long as Israel continues attacks on Lebanese territory and deploys its forces to five locations in southern Lebanon.

Israel is carrying out almost daily attacks on southern Lebanon and has also attacked Beirut several times. But before last week’s killing, there had been no attacks in the capital for several months.

In a separate attack last week, at least 13 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s public health ministry.