Nasrallah Expected to Reveal Stance on Quneitra Raid on Jan. 30
Hizbullah General Secretary Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is expected to make a speech next Friday during a popular rally to mourn the party fighters who were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Syria's Quneitra.
Nasrallah will reveal Hizbullah's stance from the raid that killed a high-ranking Iranian military official, a prominent Hizbullah member and five others.
Media reports had said that Hizbullah's chief was expected to give the speech on Sunday at "Sayyed al-Shuhada” compound in Beirut's southern suburbs.
Israel and Hizbullah are bitter enemies and fought a bloody month-long war in the summer of 2006.
Among the dead in the airstrike was Jihad Mughniyeh, the son of Imad Mughniyeh — a top Hizbullah operative who was assassinated in 2008 in Damascus in a bombing that the party blamed on Israel. Thousands of mourners attended his funeral Monday in Beirut.
In south Lebanon, thousands of Hizbullah supporters on Tuesday swarmed around the yellow-draped coffin of Mohammad Issa, a Hizbullah commander who also died in the airstrike. Issa was the highest-ranking among the group, and was among the senior cadres who headed the group's operations in Syria.
Around 10,000 supporters took part in his funeral in the southern Lebanese village of Arab Salim. Mourners fired their guns in the air and shouted anti-Israel slogans.
Since Syria's civil war began in March 2011, Israel has reportedly carried out several airstrikes in Syria that have targeted sophisticated weapons systems, including Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles and Iranian-made missiles, believed to be destined for Hizbullah.
Nasrallah recently said Hizbullah reserves the right to retaliate for those attacks. He also reiterated that the party may retaliate at any time for the assassination of the elder Mughniyeh.
H.K.
M.T.
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