Hezbollah will bury its former leader Hassan Nasrallah on Sunday nearly five months after he was killed in an Israeli airstrike, in a mass funeral aimed at showing political strength after the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group emerged badly weakened from last year’s war.

Nasrallah was killed on Sept. 27 in an Israeli airstrike as he met commanders in a bunker in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a stunning blow in the early phase of an Israeli offensive that has left the Islamist group a shadow of its former self.

Revered by Hezbollah supporters, Nasrallah led the Shi’ite Muslim group through decades of conflict with Israel, overseeing its transformation into a military force with regional sway and becoming one of the most prominent Arab figures in generations.

The funeral in Beirut’s southern suburbs will also honor Hashem Safieddine, who led Hezbollah for one week after Nasrallah’s death before he was also killed by Israel, underlining how deeply Israeli intelligence had penetrated the paramilitary group. He will be buried in the south on Monday.

“The funeral is a launchpad for the next phase. A great funeral that draws hundreds of thousands is a way of telling everyone that Hezbollah still exists, that it is still the main Shi’ite actor in Lebanon,” said Mohanad Hage Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center.

Israel killed thousands of Hezbollah fighters and inflicted huge destruction in Beirut’s southern suburbs and other areas of Lebanon where its supporters live. The impact on Hezbollah was compounded by the ousting of its ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria, severing the supply route to Iran.

Its weakened stature has been reflected in Lebanon’s post-war politics, with the group unable to impose its will in the formation of a new government and language legitimizing its arsenal omitted from the new cabinet’s policy statement.

Sheikh Sadeq al-Nabulsi, a cleric close to Hezbollah, said adversaries in Lebanon and abroad believed the group had been defeated, but the funeral would be a message that this was not the case. It would be a “battle to prove Hezbollah’s existence.”

The ceremony will be held at Lebanon’s biggest sports arena – Camille Chamoun Sports City Stadium on the outskirts of the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs.

Nasrallah will then be buried at a dedicated site nearby.

Nasrallah’s death was a huge blow to Iran, whose Revolutionary Guards established Hezbollah in 1982. It was also a blow to allied Shi’ite militias across the region, which also held him high regard.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi will attend, an Iranian official said. An Iraqi delegation including senior Shi’ite politicians and militia commanders will fly to Beirut for the funeral on a presidential plane, two Iraqi lawmakers said. Yemen’s Houthis will send a senior delegation led by the Grand Mufti, Houthi-affiliated Al Masirah TV reported.

Iraqi Airways has added flights to Beirut to cope with extra demand from Iraqis who want to travel to Beirut for the funeral, a spokesperson for the Iraqi transportation ministry said.

Supporters remember him for standing up to Israel and defying the United States. To his foes, he was head of an internationally designated terrorist organization and a proxy for Iran’s Shi’ite Islamist theocracy in its bid for influence in the Middle East.

After he was killed, Nasrallah was buried temporarily next to his son, Hadi, who died fighting for Hezbollah in 1997.

His official funeral was scheduled to allow time for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from south Lebanon under the terms of a US-backed ceasefire which ended last year’s war.

Though Israel has largely withdrawn from the south, its troops continue to hold five hilltop positions in the area.

The conflict spiraled after Hezbollah opened fire in support of its Palestinian terrorist ally Hamas at the start of the Gaza war, on Oct. 8, 2023.

The post Hezbollah to Bury Long-Time Terrorist Leader Nasrallah in Mass Funeral in Lebanon first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas said on Friday it was investigating a possible error in identifying human remains handed to Israel under a ceasefire deal as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened retaliation for failing to release the body of hostage Shiri Bibas.

Hamas was due to hand over the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her two sons Kfir and Ariel on Thursday, along with the remains of a fourth hostage under the ceasefire deal that has halted fighting in Gaza since last month.

Four bodies were delivered and the identities of the Bibas boys and the other hostage, Oded Lifshitz, were confirmed.

But Israeli specialists said the fourth body was that of an unidentified woman and not Bibas, who was kidnapped along with her sons and her husband, Yarden, during the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Basem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said “unfortunate mistakes” could occur, especially as Israeli bombing had mixed the bodies of Israeli hostages and Palestinians, thousands of whom were still buried in the rubble.

“We confirm that it is not in our values or our interest to keep any bodies or not to abide by the covenants and agreements that we sign,” he said in a statement.

Hamas said separately that it would investigate the Israeli assertions and announce the results.

The failure to hand over the body and the staged public handover of the four coffins on Thursday, caused outrage in Israel and drew a threat of retaliation from Netanyahu.

“The cruelty of the Hamas monsters knows no bounds. Not only did they kidnap the father, Yarden Bibas, the young mother, Shiri, and their two small babies. In an unspeakably cynical manner, they did not return Shiri to her little children, the little angels, and they put the body of a Gazan woman in a coffin,” Netanyahu said in a video statement.

“We will act with determination to bring Shiri home along with all our hostages – both living and dead – and ensure Hamas pays the full price for this cruel and evil violation of the agreement,” he continued, adding that “God will avenge [the deceased hostages’] blood.

Hamas said in November 2023 that the children and their mother had been killed in an Israeli air strike and Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, said Netanyahu “bears full responsibility for killing her and her children.”

But the Israeli military said intelligence assessments and forensic analysis of the bodies of the Bibas children indicated that they were deliberately killed by their captors. Chief military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the boys were killed by the terrorists “with their bare hands,” but gave no details.

Netanyahu gave no details of a possible Israeli response, but the incident underscored the fragility of the ceasefire agreement reached with US backing and with the help of Qatari and Egyptian mediators last month.

SATURDAY EXCHANGE

Six living hostages are due for release on Saturday in exchange for 602 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, according to Hamas, and the start of negotiations for a second phase of the ceasefire is expected in the coming days.

“Hamas must return the hostages as agreed in the ceasefire – the living and the deceased,” Israeli military spokesperson Nadav Shoshani said in a statement on social media platform X. “They have to bring Shiri back, and they have to release the 6 living hostages expected tomorrow.”

Netanyahu’s office confirmed it had been officially informed of the names of the six hostages to be released, which Hamas sources said was expected at around 8.30 am (0630 GMT).

As the tension over the Gaza ceasefire rose, Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to intensify operations in another Palestinian territory, the West Bank, after a number of explosions blew up buses standing empty in their depots near Tel Aviv.

No casualties were reported but the explosions were a reminder of the campaign of suicide attacks on public transport that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s.

‘THEY MAKE A JOKE OF US’

Both sides have repeatedly accused the other of ceasefire violations, with Hamas threatening to delay the release of hostages over what it said was Israel‘s refusal to allow housing materials and other aid into Gaza, a charge Israel denied.

“It’s like they make a joke of us,” said 75-year-old Ilana Caspi. “We are so in grief and this is even more, it’s like you make a punch again, another one and another one, it’s really terrible.”

The Red Cross told Reuters it was “concerned and unsatisfied” by the fact that the handover of the bodies had not been conducted privately and in a dignified manner.

One of the main groups representing hostage families said they were “horrified and devastated” by the news that Shiri Bibas’ body had not been returned but called for the ceasefire to continue to bring back all the 70 hostages still in Gaza.

“Save them from this nightmare,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement.

Despite the outrage over Shiri Bibas, there was no indication that Israel would not take part in talks over a second phase of the ceasefire deal.

The Israel Hayom newspaper reported that Israeli negotiators were considering seeking an extension of the 42-day ceasefire, to delay moving to a second phase, which would involve talks over hard-to-resolve issues including an end to the war and the future of Hamas in Gaza.

The post Hamas Says It Is Investigating Possible Error Over Hostage Body as Israel Decries Terror Group’s ‘Cruelty’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

The Israeli military said on Friday that one of the bodies released by Hamas did not belong to any of the hostages held in Gaza, accusing the Palestinian terrorist group of violating an already fragile ceasefire.

Two of the bodies were identified as infant Kfir Bibas and his four-year-old brother Ariel, while a third body that was supposed to be their mother, Shiri, was found not to match with any hostage and remained unidentified, the military said.

“This is a violation of utmost severity by the Hamas terrorist organization, which is obliged under the agreement to return four deceased hostages,” the military said, in a statement, demanding the return of Shiri and all hostages.

The family of hostage Oded Lifshitz, said in a statement that his body had been formally identified.

Hamas said on Friday it was investigating a possible error in identifying human remains handed to Israel under the ceasefire deal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier vowed revenge on Hamas after the group released the remains of what it said were four hostages, including that of Kfir and Ariel, the youngest of those abducted during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

Palestinian militants handed over four black coffins in a carefully orchestrated public display as a crowd of Palestinians and dozens of armed Hamas terrorists watched, creating a spectacle which was condemned by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

The purported remains of the boys, their mother, and Lifshitz, were handed over under the Gaza ceasefire agreement reached last month with the backing of the United States and the mediation of Qatar and Egypt.

Israelis lined the road in the rain near the Gaza border to pay their respects as the convoy carrying the coffins drove by.

“We stand here together, with a broken heart. The sky is also crying with us, and we pray to see better days,” said one woman, who gave her name only as Efrat.

In Tel Aviv, people gathered, some weeping, in a public square opposite Israel‘s defense headquarters that has come to be known as Hostages Square.

“Agony. Pain. There are no words. Our hearts — the hearts of an entire nation — lie in tatters,” said President Isaac Herzog.

In a recorded address released after the remains of the hostages were handed over, Netanyahu vowed to eliminate Hamas, saying “the four coffins” obliged Israel to ensure “more than ever” that there was no repeat of the Oct. 7 attack.

“Our loved ones’ blood is shouting at us from the soil and is obliging us to settle the score with the despicable murderers, and we will,” he said.

Over the course of the 16-month-old conflict, Israeli officials have repeatedly asserted that Hamas would be destroyed and the roughly 250 hostages abducted during the October 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel would be returned home.

During Thursday’s handover, one terrorist stood beside a poster showing coffins wrapped in Israeli flags. It read “The Return of the War = The Return of your Prisoners in Coffins.”

UN chief Guterres condemned “the parading of bodies and displaying of the coffins of the deceased hostages in the manner seen this morning, which is abhorrent and appalling,” his spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, said.

He said international law required remains to be handed over in a way that ensures “respect for the dignity of the deceased and their families.”

‘SYMBOL’

Kfir Bibas was nine months old when the Bibas family, including their father Yarden, was abducted at Kibbutz Nir Oz, one of a string of communities near Gaza that were overrun by Hamas-led attackers from Gaza.

Hamas said in November 2023 that the boys and their mother had been killed in an Israeli airstrike, but their deaths were not confirmed by Israeli authorities.

“Shiri and the kids became a symbol,” said Yiftach Cohen, of the Nir Oz kibbutz, which lost around a quarter of its residents, either killed or kidnapped, during the assault.

Yarden Bibas was returned alive in an exchange for prisoners this month.

Lifshitz was 83 when he was abducted from Nir Oz, the kibbutz he helped found. His wife, Yocheved, 85 at the time, was seized with him and released two weeks later, along with another woman.

He was a former journalist and in an op-ed in left-leaning Haaretz in January 2019, he listed what he said were Netanyahu’s policy failures.

LIVING HOSTAGES

The handover marked the first return of dead bodies during the current agreement.

The military said that the Bibas children had been murdered in captivity in November 2023 by “terrorists.” The prime minister’s office earlier said that Lifshitz was murdered in captivity by Islamic Jihad, another Iran-backed terrorist group in Gaza.

Chen Kugel, the head of the Israel National Center of Forensic Medicine, later said in a televised statement that Lifshitz had been murdered more than a year ago.

The Hamas-led attack into Israel killed some 1,200 people, and 251 individuals were kidnapped as hostages. Israel‘s subsequent military campaign aimed to free the hostages and dismantle Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in Gaza.

Thursday’s handover of bodies will be followed by the return of six living hostages on Saturday, in exchange for hundreds more Palestinians, expected to be women and minors detained by Israeli forces in Gaza during the war.

Negotiations for a second phase, expected to cover the return of around 60 remaining hostages, less than half of whom are believed to be alive, and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip to allow an end to the war, are expected to begin in the coming days.

The post Israeli Military Says Hostage Body Released by Hamas Is Not Shiri Bibas or Any Other Captive in Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.