Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah, was killed in a massive Israeli air attack on Beirut on Friday evening, the Lebanon-based group has confirmed.The Israeli army had claimed the assassination earlier in the day.
Nasrallah, who reached the peak of his popularity after the war with Israel in 2006, was seen as a hero by many, not just in Lebanon but beyond. Standing up to Israel is what defined him and his Iranian-backed group, Hezbollah, for years. But that changed when Hezbollah sent fighters to Syria to crush the uprising threatening President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.
Nasrallah was no longer seen as a leader of a resistance movement but the leader of a Shia party fighting for Iranian interests, and was criticised by many Arab countries.
Even before Hezbollah’s involvement in the war in Syria, Nasrallah had failed to convince many in the Sunni Muslim Arab world that his movement was not behind the 2005 assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister, Rafik Hariri. An international tribunal indicted four members of the group for the murder and one was later convicted.
Despite this, Nasrallah continued to enjoy support from his loyal base – mainly Lebanon’s Shia Muslim …
