Top News

New Delhi, October 29 (ANI): Lebanese armed group, Hezbollah on October 29 elected Sheikh Naim Qassem as its new head. Sheikh Naim Qassem was elected as its head after a power vacuum was created after the killing of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Qassem was Deputy Secretary General of the armed group in Lebanon and has been associated with the group for more than 30 years. Hezbollah’s former boss Nasrallah, who embodied the Lebanese Shia movement was eliminated in an air strike in Beirut last month. Shortly after Nasrallah’s elimination, his cousin Safieddine was viewed as the favourite to take the helm but he also got killed in an Israeli strike. Born in 1953 in Beirut to a family from Lebanon’s south, Qassem’s political activism began with the Lebanese Shi'ite Amal Movement. In the wake of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, he left the group in 1979 which also shaped the political thinking of Shi'ite activists. Qassem took part in meetings that led formation of Hezbollah, established with the backing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards after Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Qassem was appointed deputy chief in 1991 by the armed group’s then-secretary general Abbas al-Musawi. Qassem remained in his role when Nasrallah became leader, and has long been one of Hezbollah’s leading spokesmen. He has also been the general coordinator of Hezbollah’s parliamentary election campaigns since the group first contested them in 1992.