Hezbollah names deputy head Naim Qassem as successor to slain chief Nasrallah

TEHRAN

Lebanon's Hezbollah movement announced Tuesday it has chosen deputy head Naim Qassem to succeed Hasan Nasrallah as leader after his death in an Israeli strike on south Beirut last month.

"Hezbollah's (governing) Shura Council agreed to elect... Sheikh Naim Qassem as secretary general of Hezbollah," the Iran-backed group said in a statement, more than a month after Nasrallah's killing.

Hashem Safieddine, the head of Hezbollah's executive council, was initially tipped to succeed Nasrallah.

But he too was killed in an Israeli strike on Beirut's southern suburbs shortly after Nasrallah's assassination.

Qassem, 71, was one of Hezbollah's founders in 1982 and has been the party's deputy secretary general since 1991, the year before Nasrallah took the helm.

He was born in Beirut in 1953 to a family from the village of Kfar Fila on the border with Israel.

He was the most senior Hezbollah official to continue making public appearances after Nasrallah largely went into hiding following the group's 2006 war with Israel.

Since Nasrallah's death in a huge Israeli air strike on Sept. 27, Qassem has made three televised addresses, speaking in more formal Arabic than the colloquial Lebanese favoured by Nasrallah.