Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli air strike targeting the group's headquarters in Beirut late on Friday. Nasrallah led Hezbollah through decades of conflict with Israel, overseeing its transformation from an armed group into a political force that – backed by Iran – dominated Lebanese politics.
Hassan Nasrallah was largely responsible for expanding Hezbollah (Party of God) from a guerrilla faction into Lebanon's most powerful political force. He led the armed group through decades of conflict with Israel, overseeing its transformation into a force with regional sway and becoming one of the most prominent Arab figures in generations.
He enjoyed cult status among his Shiite Muslim supporters, had a formidable arsenal far bigger and more modern than Lebanon's national army, and dominated Lebanese institutions.
Among supporters he was lauded for standing up to Israel and defying the United States. To enemies, he was head of a terrorist organisation and a proxy for Iran's Shiite Islamist theocracy in its constant battle for influence in the Middle East.
He became secretary general of Hezbollah in 1992 at just 32 years of age, becoming the public face of a once-shadowy group that was founded by Iran's Revolutionary Guards in 1982 to fight the Israeli occupation.
Nasrallah led Hezbollah when its guerrillas finally drove Israeli forces from southern Lebanon in 2000, ending an 18-year occupation.
Supporting Hamas
Wearing the black turban of a sayyed, or a descendent of the Prophet Mohammad, Nasrallah used his addresses to rally Hezbollah's base but also to deliver carefully calibrated threats, often wagging his finger as he did so.
A gifted public speaker, 64-year-old Nasrallah was a master of cadence, swinging from humour to belittle his enemies to rage to fire up his 100,000-man militia.
Hezbollah is the only group that refused to give up its weapons after Lebanon's 15-year civil war ended in 1990, and Nasrallah insisted that Israel remained an existential threat.
Since Hezbollah's Palestinian ally Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, Hezbollah has battled Israeli troops almost daily along the Lebanon-Israel border.
"We are facing a great battle," Nasrallah said in an August 1 speech at the funeral of Hezbollah's top military commander, Fuad Shukr, who was also killed in an Israeli strike on the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut.
When thousands of Hezbollah members were injured and dozens killed when their communications devices exploded in an apparent Israeli operation last week, that battle seemed to turn against Hezbollah. Responding to the attacks on Hezbollah's communications network in a September 19 speech, Nasrallah vowed to punish Israel, saying it has crossed a "red line".
"This is a reckoning that will come, its nature, its size, how and where? This is certainly what we will keep to ourselves and in the narrowest circle even within ourselves," he said.
That was his last major public broadcast.
Israel has meanwhile dramatically escalated its attacks on Hezbollah, killing several senior commanders in targeted strikes and unleashing a massive bombardment in Hezbollah-controlled areas of Lebanon, which has killed hundreds of people.
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A clandestine life
Nasrallah led a life in hiding to avoid assassination by his movement's arch-enemy Israel. He was rarely been seen in public since his movement fought a devastating 2006 war with the Jewish state.
In a 2014 interview with Lebanon's pro-Hezbollah newspaper "Al-Akhbar," Nasrallah said that "the Israelis are pushing the idea ... that I live far from people, that I don't see them or communicate with them".
He said that he regularly switched sleeping places, but denied that he lived in a bunker.
"The point of security measures is that movement be kept secret, but that doesn't stop me from moving around and seeing what is happening," he said.
Nasrallah was still occasionally photographed alongside other leaders of Iran-backed armed groups in the Middle East.
Very few people are believed to know where he lived. Officials and journalists who met Nasrallah in recent years described tight security measures that prevented them from knowing where they were being taken.
The vast majority of his speeches over the past two decades were recorded and broadcast from a secret location.
A divided Lebanon
Born in Beirut's impoverished northern suburb of Burj Hammud on August 31, 1960, he was one of nine children of a poor grocer hailing from the tiny southern village of Bazuriyeh.
Nasrallah studied politics and the Koran for three years at a seminary in Iraq's Shiite holy city of Najaf, before being expelled in 1978 when the Sunni-dominated government turned on Shiite activists.
He then became heavily involved in Lebanese politics and gained much of his early experience in the Shiite Amal militia during the civil war.
But he broke away from Amal when Israeli troops marched on Beirut in 1982 to become one of the founders of Hezbollah.
He acquired his cult status in Lebanon and across the Arab world after Israel withdrew its troops from south Lebanon under relentless Hezbollah attacks in May 2000, ending 22 years of occupation of the border strip.
Hezbollah is admired by many Shiites in Lebanon for supporting local charities, building up health and education services in its strongholds and assisting the needy among its supporters.
But the Hezbollah movement is also widely hated in a divided Lebanon, including by those who dream of a nation free from sectarianism and where the rule of law prevails.
Nasrallah's popularity soared across the Arab world after a UN-brokered ceasefire ended the 2006 conflict with Israel, before suffering a blow when he controversially sent fighters to neighbouring Syria to prop up President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
Nasrallah was married and has four surviving children.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)
