New Delhi:
Thousands of people gathered on the outskirts of Beirut today to pay respects to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, nearly five months after he was killed in an Israeli airstrike in a stunning blow to the Iran-backed group.
However, the sound of Israeli fighter jets flying above the massive gathering briefly drowned out the slogan-shouting people below.
Visuals from the funeral show what the local media said were four Israeli F-16s flying over the funeral procession.
Israel’s army today said “the world is a better place” now.
“Today is Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral. Today the world is a better place,” the Israeli army posted on X.
The killing of Nasrallah, who led the Shi’ite Muslim group through decades of conflict with Israel and oversaw its transformation into a military force with regional sway, was one of the opening salvos in an Israeli escalation that badly weakened Hezbollah.
Carrying pictures of Nasrallah and Hezbollah flags, supporters gathered early on Sunday for a mass funeral for Nasrallah and other slain leaders of the group at a stadium in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, news agency AFP reported.
The 55,000-seat Camille Chamoun Sports City stadium was nearly full hours before the ceremony was set to start, AFP reported.
⚡️Zionist terrorists warplanes over the funeral pic.twitter.com/pnCIMv4Zgg
— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) February 23, 2025
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed continued “resistance” against Israel.
“The enemy should know that resistance against usurpation, oppression, and arrogance is not over and will continue until the desired goal is achieved,” Khamenei said in a statement published on his official website.
The mass funeral is aimed at showing strength after Hezbollah emerged battered from last year’s war with Israel, which killed most of its leadership and thousands of fighters and wreaked destruction on south Lebanon.
The impact on Hezbollah was compounded by the ousting of its ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria, severing a key supply route.
“We may have lost a great deal as a man, but we have not lost the value of the resistance because the resistance is clinging on,” Hassan Nasreddine, a Lebanese man headed to the ceremony from the south, told AFP.
The funeral was also being held for Hashem Safieddine, who led Hezbollah for a week after Nasrallah’s death. He was killed in an Israeli strike before he had been publicly announced as Nasrallah’s successor.
After his death, Nasrallah was buried temporarily next to his son, Hadi, who died fighting for Hezbollah in 1997. His official funeral was delayed to allow time for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from south Lebanon under the terms of a US-backed ceasefire which ended last year’s war.
With inputs from AFP