Hezbollah says Nasrallah to be buried outside Beirut in February 23 ‘grand’ funeral
Terror group chief Naim Qassem admits Hashem Safieddine had been chosen as successor before he was killed, calls on Lebanese authorities to pressure Israel over ostensible ceasefire violations

The funeral for Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah will be held on February 23, the group’s current chief said on Sunday, months after his predecessor’s death in an Israeli airstrike.
Nasrallah was killed in a huge Israeli airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs on September 27, 2024, as Israel scaled up its campaign against the Iran-backed terror group following almost a year of cross-border hostilities.
After decades at the helm of the group once seen as invincible, the killing of the charismatic leader sent shockwaves across Lebanon and the wider region.
“After security conditions prevented holding a funeral” during two months of all-out war that ended with a ceasefire deal reached on November 27, Hezbollah has decided to hold “on February 23 a grand… public funeral” for Nasrallah, Naim Qassem said in a televised speech on Sunday.
“We hope that it will be a grand funeral procession befitting this great personality,” he said.
Hezbollah officials had previously indicated that Nasrallah would be buried following the end of the initial 60-day ceasefire period with Israel, which ended on January 26. However, the deadline for the IDF to withdraw was later pushed back by the United States and Lebanon to February 18, after Israel assessed that the Lebanese army had deployed too slowly across the region.

Qassem also confirmed for the first time that leading official Hashem Safieddine had been chosen to succeed Nasrallah before he too was killed in an Israeli strike in October.
Safieddine will be buried “as secretary-general” or leader of Hezbollah, because “we had… elected His Eminence Sayyed Hashem as secretary-general… but he was martyred on October 3, a day or two before the announcement,” Qassem added.
The group will hold Safieddine’s funeral on the same day as Nasrallah’s. The deeply religious Safieddine, a cleric with family ties to Nasrallah, had been widely viewed as the most likely candidate for the party’s top job.
Nasrallah will be buried on the outskirts of Beirut “in a plot of land we chose between the old and new airport roads,” while Safieddine will be buried in his hometown of Deir Qanun in southern Lebanon, he said.
Nasrallah was temporarily buried elsewhere due to security concerns, he said. Shiite Muslim rites provide for such a temporary burial when circumstances prevent a proper funeral or the deceased cannot be buried where they wished.
Last October, a source close to the group told AFP that Nasrallah had been buried in a secret location, for fear Israel would target a large funeral.

During his speech on Sunday, Qassem also urged Lebanese authorities to pressure Israel to stop what he called violations of the ceasefire.
“The Lebanese state is fully responsible for following up, pressuring and trying to prevent as much as it can, through sponsors and international pressure, this violation and this Israeli aggression,” Qassem said.
But the Hezbollah leader said his group will be “patient” and wait for the Lebanese state to fulfill its responsibility.
Qassem further acknowledged that Hezbollah did not achieve an “absolute victory,” but said it has registered some gains and some losses. Its main achievement, he said, was to prove the steadfastness of the “resistance” and Israel’s inability to break it.
The Hezbollah chief praised the residents of southern Lebanon who have returned to their homes, saying that scenes of their return indicated a “popular liberation.”
The IDF has warned Lebanese residents against returning to south Lebanon villages until they are authorized to do so.