Hezbollah names deputy head Naim Qassem as successor to slain chief Nasrallah

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement announced on Tuesday (Oct 29) that it has chosen deputy head Naim Qassem to succeed Hasan Nasrallah as leader after his death in an Israeli strike on south Beirut last month.

“Hezbollah’s (governing) Shura Council agreed to elect … Sheikh Naim Qassem as secretary general of Hezbollah,” the Iran-backed group said in a statement, more than a month after Nasrallah’s killing.

Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Hezbollah’s central headquarters on Sep 27. He had led the group for 32 years.

Hashem Safieddine, the head of Hezbollah’s executive council, was initially tipped to succeed Nasrallah. But he too was killed in an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Qassem, 71, was one of Hezbollah’s founders in 1982 and has been the party’s deputy secretary general since 1991, the year before Nasrallah took the helm.