Qassem says Kahale incident attempt to 'fabricate nonexistent issue'

Hezbollah deputy chief Sheikh Naim Qassem has visited the family of slain Hezbollah member Ahmed Qassas, who was killed in the Kahale clash on Wednesday.

“The footage revealed that Qassas was the symbol of honor, loyalty and dignity in his resistant position and he sacrificed his blood for the interest of Lebanon,” Qassem told the family.

Calling on security and judicial agencies to “follow up and investigate accurately in order to penalize the sedition stirrers who tried to take the country into the abyss,” Hezbollah’s number two warned that “what happened in Kahale was an attempt to stir sedition and fabricate a nonexistent issue.”

Qassem also lauded “the political forces and people who stood by Hezbollah and were working together to pacify the situations and put out sedition.”

Qassas and a resident of Kahale, both of whom were armed, were killed in an exchange of gunfire Wednesday after a Hezbollah ammunition truck flipped over on the international highway that passes through the town.

The incident started after some residents learned that the truck belonged to Hezbollah. They surrounded it and demanded to know what was inside before a fistfight ensued between two individuals. Footage available online also shows Kahale residents hurling rocks at the overturned truck and its guards and the Hezbollah members brandishing weapons and shooting in the area. Another video shows a short-distance exchange of gunfire between Hezbollah members and Fadi Bejjani, the Kahale man who was killed in the violence. The identity of the individual who fired the first shot is still unclear.