Hezbollah leader promises response to Israel’s strike killing top commander

Naim Qassem labels the killing of Haytham Tabtabai as a ‘heinous crime’ saying Hezbollah has the right to respond.

Hezbollah’s leader Naim Qassem says the group has the right to respond to Israel’s assassination of its top military chief in a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs last week.

In a televised speech on Friday, Qassem called the killing of Haytham Ali Tabtabai “a blatant aggression and a heinous crime”, adding that the Lebanese armed group has “the right to respond, and we will determine the timing for that.”

“Do you expect a war later? It’s possible, sometime. Yes, this possibility is there, and the possibility of no war is also there,” Qassem said.

Qassem did not explicitly say what the group’s role would be in any new war, but said Lebanon should prepare a plan to confront Israel that relies on “its army and its people”.