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Hezbollah taunts Israel with 'body parts'
HASSAN Nasrallah, the Hezbollah chief and one of Israel's most wanted men, appeared in public for a Shi'ite religious event in the Lebanese capital for the first time in more than a year.In a fiery speech, Mr Nasrallah said that his Lebanese Shi'ite militant group had the heads and body parts of soldiers that the Israeli army had abandoned. "We have the heads, the hands, the feet and even a nearly intact cadaver from the head down to the pelvis," he said. Mr Nasrallah has been Israel's top public enemy since his Iranian- and Syrian-backed Shi'ite militant group fought a deadly month-long war against the Jewish state in the summer of 2006. Amid heavy security, he took part in an event for the Shi'ite religious commemoration of Ashura in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, heading a procession of tens of thousands of Shi'ite faithful. "God protect Nasrallah," chanted the crowd, carrying portraits of the Hezbollah chief. Mr Nasrallah's last public appearance was at a massive rally in the Shi'ite suburbs in September 2006, in the wake of the war against Israel during which he went into hiding. Israel's war with Hezbollah, which followed Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers, resulted in the deaths of more than 1200 civilians in Lebanon, a third of them children, as well as 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers. The Jewish state failed in both its stated aims for launching the war: to stop rocket fire on northern Israel and to recover the two soldiers. Posted by: tipper 2008-01-19 |
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