Hassan Nasrallah, the veteran leader of the Hizbollah militant group, will be buried on Sunday in Beirut, almost five months after he was killed in an Israeli air strike, following a ceremony attended by tens of thousands of people.
Clutching pictures of Nasrallah and draped in yellow Hizbollah flags, supporters from Lebanon and beyond filled the 55,000-seat Camille Chamoun Sports City stadium, with the crowds spilling over outside, for a funeral intended as a show of force for the movement that has been battered by its war with Israel.
Many in the crowd wept when the coffins of Nasrallah and his successor Hashem Safieddine, who reigned over Hizbollah for just a week before he was also assassinated by Israel, were paraded through the stadium.
Nasrallah, 64, was killed along with other senior figures in Hizbollah on September 27, when Israel’s air force dropped dozens of bombs on one of the group’s command posts in Beirut’s densely populated southern suburb of Dahiyeh.
As the procession continued on Sunday afternoon, a triangular formation of Israeli F15 and F35 jets flew at low altitudes over the capital, causing panic and rage among attendees.
One woman, her face streaked with tears, clutched her young son and looked up in fear.
The stadium erupted into shouts of defiance, the emcee declaring that the sound of the planes would not intimidate them. “The roar of our call is greater than all of your sounds,” he said, leading the crowd in a chant: “At your service, O Nasrallah. Death to Israel.”
Nasrallah’s killing marked a stunning blow just days after Israel escalated its campaign against the Iran-backed militant group into a full-blown war, which would devastate its senior leadership and diminish its weapons stockpile.
The killing also highlighted how deeply Israel’s intelligence networks had penetrated a group whose internal discipline had always been praised.
The war was triggered when Hizbollah began firing rockets towards Israel on October 8, 2023 “in solidarity” with Gaza, following Hamas’ deadly October 7 assault.
At least 4,000 people were killed in Lebanon — many of them presumed to be Hizbollah fighters — as Israeli missiles rained down on areas from which the group draws its support.
In his 32 years at the helm, Nasrallah transformed the Shia militant group into the pre-eminent force in Iran’s regional network of proxies, dubbed the axis of resistance.
Until his death, he was revered, not just at home but throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds, for his defence of the Palestinians and his challenge to Israel.
Many of his supporters were still grappling with his death.
“Some of us who came here, came with some hope that we’re going to find [Nasrallah] alive, that he’ll come out and put our minds at ease,” said 21-year-old Ali, one of the mourners who attended the ceremony. “But when the coffin passed by us we realised that we had lost all sense of security.”
“We realised that this country, this region, was dependent on a specific person, and we lost him,” Ali added. “There is nothing that can describe the feeling. It’s like we lost our father. Everyone here has lost their father.”
Hadi, an Iraqi writer, said he flew from Baghdad with a delegation of seven for the funeral. “Nasrallah is not just a martyr for Lebanon, not just for the Shia, but for all of Islam.”
Staunch Hizbollah ally and speaker of parliament Nabih Berri attended the ceremony, alongside Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and speaker of parliament Mohammad-Baqer Ghalibaf, as well as religious, political and militia leaders from Iraq, Pakistan and Yemen.
The ceremony was intended to project Hizbollah’s enduring power, after the bruising it took at the hands of its arch-enemy.
Israeli troops remain in five strategic hilltop positions in southern Lebanon, despite a ceasefire agreement signed by both countries, which mandated a full withdrawal of Israeli forces by mid-February. Its air force has also continued to conduct air strikes on what it says are Hizbollah positions, including striking multiple targets on Sunday morning.
The militant group suffered a further blow after its ally Bashar al-Assad in was deposed in Syria last December, severing a vital supply route.
The group’s diminished stature is also reflected in Lebanon’s postwar politics. For the first time since the end of the country’s 15-year civil war in 1990, the cabinet’s manifesto did not include language that legitimises Hizbollah’s continued arsenal.
Neither Lebanon’s president nor premier attended on Sunday.
In a bid to boost morale, an address broadcast on the stadium’s screens from an undisclosed location saw Hizbollah’s current leader Naim Qassem reassure the crowds that the group remained “strong”.
“We will not submit and not accept the continuation of our killing and occupation as we watch,” Qassem said.
The crowds began to thin as he spoke.
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