Hezbollah’s Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem has been elected as the new secretary-general of the Lebanese resistance movement after his predecessor Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, was assassinated in an Israeli attack on southern Beirut last month.
On Tuesday, Hezbollah’s Shura Council, the group’s central decision-making body, appointed the 60-year-old cleric to the post.
Sheikh Qassem is a veteran figure in Hezbollah, having served as deputy secretary general of the Lebanese resistance group since 1991.
He was appointed deputy secretary general under Hezbollah’s late secretary general, Abbas al-Musawi, who was killed by an Israeli helicopter attack in 1992, and remained in the role when Nasrallah became leader.
His political activism began in the Lebanese Amal Movement, founded in 1974. He left Amal in 1979, in the wake of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, which shaped the political thinking of many young Lebanese activists.
He took part in meetings that led to the formation of Hezbollah in 1982.
Sheikh Qassem has long been one of the leading spokesmen for Hezbollah, conducting many interviews with foreign media.
He was born in 1953 in Beirut’s Basta Tahta district, and his family originally hails from Kfar Fila town in Lebanon’s southern Nabatieh province.
Three Palestinian babies have died from hypothermia in the Gaza Strip over the recent days,…
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmail Baqaei has strongly condemned an Israeli air attack on Gaza…
Members of the Syrian police have been killed in an “ambush” by forces loyal to…
A spokesman for the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) has stated that the aerial attacks…
It is not likely that EU member states will send peacekeepers to Ukraine, especially without…
US President Joe Biden has directed the Pentagon to "continue its surge" of weapons and…