Hezbollah’s deputy leader has vowed to continue fighting Israel and says the militants are ready to confront any Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon, in his first public comments since the killing of chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
Israel would not achieve its goals and Hezbollah knew the battle might be long, Naim Qassem said in a televised address on Monday that came after much of the Iran-backed group’s top command was wiped out.
“We will face any possibility and we are ready if the Israelis decide to enter by land and the resistance forces are ready for a ground engagement,” he said from an undisclosed location.
“There are deputy commanders and there are replacements in case a commander is wounded in any post.”
He spoke on Monday as Israeli air strikes on targets in Beirut and elsewhere in Lebanon continued, extending a two-week long wave of attacks that has eliminated several Hezbollah commanders but also killed about 1000 Lebanese and forced one million to flee their homes, according to the Lebanese government.
Nasrallah’s killing, along with the series of blows against the organisation’s communications devices and assassination of other senior commanders, constitute the biggest blow to the organisation since Iran created it in 1982 to fight Israel.
He had built it up into Lebanon’s most powerful military and political force, with wide sway across the Middle East.
Now Hezbollah faces the challenge of replacing a charismatic, towering leader who was a hero to supporters because he stood up to Israel even though the West branded him a terrorist mastermind.
“We will choose a secretary-general for the party at the earliest opportunity ... and we will fill the leadership and positions on a permanent basis,” Qassem said.
Qassem said Hezbollah’s fighters had continued to fire rockets as deep as 150km into Israeli territory and were ready to face any possible Israeli ground incursion.
“What we are doing is the bare minimum ... We know that the battle may be long,” he said.
“We will win as we won in the liberation of 2006 in the face of the Israeli enemy,” he said, referring to the last big conflict between the two foes.
Israel says it will do whatever it takes to return its citizens to evacuated communities on its northern border safely, and has not ruled out a ground invasion.
“The elimination of Nasrallah is an important step but it is not the final one. In order to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities, we will employ all of our capabilities, and this includes you,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told troops deployed to the country’s northern border.
Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said his government was ready to fully implement a UN resolution that had aimed to end Hezbollah’s armed presence south of the Litani River as part of an agreement to stop the war with Israel.
Hours before Qassem spoke, the Palestinian militant group Hamas said an Israeli airstrike killed its leader in Lebanon, Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin, along with his wife, son and daughter in the southern city of Tyre on Monday.
Another Palestinian organisation said three of its leaders died in a strike in central Beirut - the first such hit inside the capital’s limits.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said its leaders were killed in a strike on Beirut’s Kola district.
Reuters witnesses said the strike hit the upper floor of an apartment building. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
The wave of Israeli attacks on militant targets in Lebanon are part of a conflict also stretching from the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the occupied West Bank, to Yemen, Iraq and within Israel itself.
The latest actions indicated Israel has no intention of slowing its offensive even after eliminating Nasrallah, who was Iran’s most powerful ally in its “Axis of Resistance” against Israeli and US influence in the region.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said Tehran would not let any of Israel’s “criminal acts” go unanswered.
He was referring to the killing of Nasrallah and an Iranian Guard deputy commander, Brigadier General Abbas Nilforoushan, who died in the same strikes on Friday.