Top Hezbollah official tells Israel continued war won't return north residents

Senior Hezbollah official Sayyed Hashem Safieddine has addressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “his army” by saying that “through the current way that they’re following, they won’t be able to restore security and serenity for their northern settlers to enable them to return.”

“Accordingly, the only way which we had announced from the very beginning would be halting the killing, destruction and massacres in Gaza, so that the front here in south Lebanon could be deactivated,” Safieddine, who is the head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council, added.

He was speaking at a ceremony marking 40 days since Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah military chief Fouad Shukur, who was killed in a brazen Israeli airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Hezbollah retaliated on August 25 by firing over 320 rockets at northern Israel and a swarm of suicide drones at central Israel.

“After Sayyed Fouad’s martyrdom, the resistance proved through its actions that it became fiercer, stronger and more willing to sacrifice and act,” Safieddine added.

“The assassination of martyr leader Sayyed Fouad Shukur made targeting Tel Aviv on the agenda of the resistance’s operations, and this is what it wanted to prove through targeting Unit 8200 in the Glilot area,” the Hezbollah official said.

He added: “All these attacks and killing will not stop the resistance or make it retreat or weaken. God willing it will be stronger.”