The head of the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah’s executive committee, the cleric Hashim Safideen This Sunday, he was elected secretary-general of the organization’s political and armed movement, Saudi state television Al Arabiya reported.
According to an international news channel in Arabic cited by Spanish agency EFE, the Hezbollah council chose Safi al-Din to succeed his cousin, Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli bombardment on the outskirts of Beirut.
Hashim Safideen or Safi al-Din was born in southern Lebanon in 1964 and has been close to Hezbollah’s leadership since 1995, a member of the movement’s Shura Council (advisory body).
He did his Islamic studies in the holy cities of Najab in Iraq and Qom in Iran, where major schools were located for those who aspired to become Grand Ayatollah, one of the highest titles among Shia Muslims.
Like the majority of senior Hezbollah officials — an organization considered a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States, but not by the European Union, which considers only its armed wing a terrorist organization — Safi al-Din is classified as a terrorist by the U.S. government. in 2017 for being a “key member” of the group, according to a memo later released by the State Department.
One of his last public interventions was in mid-September, condemning Israel’s killing of Fuad Shukr, a top commander of the Hezbollah militia, in a targeted bombing in Beirut’s southern suburbs known as Tahey. Killed Nasrallah.
About a million people have fled their homes in Lebanon in recent days due to an Israeli bombing campaign, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikadi announced today, recalling that his government had been calling for a “seven or eight months” ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. Lebanon.
Today, the Israeli military continued its violent bombardment against Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon, killing at least 105 people, two days after the leader of the Lebanese Islamic Movement and dozens of other members died.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 70,000 Lebanese and Syrians living in Lebanon have fled the country, most of them crossing the border into Syria as a result of the intensity of Israeli bombings.
“The situation is difficult for civilians displaced by Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon. To date, more than 70,000 people have fled the country,” UNHCR wrote on its X (formerly Twitter) social network account.
The special UN agency cites its representatives in Lebanon, Ivo Freijsen, and Gonzalo Vargas Llosa in Syria, as sources of information on “the growing crisis in the region and UNHCR’s response to it.”
On October 7, 2023, Hezbollah began firing ‘rockets’, missiles and ‘drones’ (unmanned aerial vehicles) into northern Israel, the day after the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas attacked Israeli territory, sparking an Israeli war on that Palestinian territory.
Hamas and Hezbollah are allies that see themselves as part of an Iranian-backed “axis of resistance” against Israel.
Israel has responded with airstrikes that have already killed the movement’s other senior leaders, in addition to Hezbollah’s leader, and the clashes have escalated to the brink of full-scale war, raising fears of a spillover to the entire Middle East. region.
Israeli officials say they are determined to return nearly 60,000 citizens to communities in the country’s north that were evacuated nearly a year ago.
Despite months of backdoor negotiations between Israel and Hamas mediated by the US, Qatar and Egypt, Hezbollah has announced that it will suspend rocket fire only if a cease-fire is in place in Gaza.
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