DHAKA: Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has said his group is determined to continue its fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (IS) following a double suicide bombing in Beirut’s southern suburbs that killed 43 people and left over 200 injured.
Nasrallah made the remarks in a somber speech delivered on Saturday evening, two days after the country was rocked by IS’s attacks and a day after coordinated attacks in Paris left more than 125 dead.
Focusing largely on the recent events in Lebanon, he swore Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia group currently fighting alongside the Syrian army in Syria, will ‘search for open fronts with Daesh (IS)’.
‘Their goal is to pressure the resistance to withdraw from the battle against the takfiris in Syria,’ he said in his televised address.
‘(These bombings) will bring the opposite results. If they assume killing our men and women and children and burning our homes and markets will shake our will and determination, they are wrong.’
‘It will increase our determination. We fought IS and other groups on several fronts, and after this we will search for (IS) on open fronts and fight them there.’
Several people have since been arrested for their involvement in the twin suicide attacks.
The attacks took place in Burj el-Barajneh, a popular, predominantly Shia neighborhood in Dahiyeh, Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Preliminary investigations have revealed the identity of one of the suicide bombers as a Syrian national, and the second has yet to be identified. Those involved in the network around the attacks include Syrian and Lebanese nationals.
Eager to ensure calm between the different communities in Lebanon, Nasrallah went on to warn against a plot by groups like IS to create strife between the Lebanese and the Palestinian refugees, the Lebanese and the Syrian refugees, and the Sunnis and Shia Muslims.
‘His speech was a political message,’ said Elias Hanna, a retired Lebanese general and military analyst. ‘He’s saying that (IS) won’t defeat Hezbollah in Dahiyeh.
BDST: 1319 HRS, Nov 15, 2015
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