Hezbollah appoints Naim Qassem as new chief

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Hezbollah has announced Naim Qassem as its new head.

Qassem, whose promotion from deputy leader was announced on Tuesday, replaces Hassan Nasrallah as secretary-general of the Lebanon-based armed group.

Nasrallah was killed in Beirut in late September by an Israeli strike. Many other senior Hezbollah officials have also been targeted since Israel turned its focus on the group that month.

In a statement, Hezbollah said Qassem was elected to take up the position due to his “adherence to the principles and goals of Hezbollah”.

It added that the group would “[ask] God Almighty to guide him in this noble mission in leading Hezbollah and its Islamic resistance”.

The 71-year-old Qassem has often been referred to as Hezbollah’s “number two”. He is one of the religious scholars who founded the group in the early 1980s.

The killing of Nasrallah, who embodied the Lebanese Shia movement in the eyes of its supporters and the wider region, was seen as having left a vacuum inside a group that had already had much of its leadership decapitated as a result of months of Israeli assassinations.

More to come…