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Nasrallah reaches out to family of slain LAF helicopter plot

September 5, 2008

Nasrallah reaches out to family of slain LAF helicopter plot

BEIRUT: Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Thursday that his group will not surrender its weapons “as long as Israeli threats persist.” “These weapons will remain because they are used for defense,” Nasrallah said in a televised speech during an iftar hosted by the Hizbullah Support Committee.

Nasrallah also reiterated that Hizbullah will destroy Israel if the Jewish state launches a new attack on Lebanon.

He said the Israeli administration and military were well aware that their navy and air force “failed to achieve any military victories [during the summer 2006 war] … They caused destruction but they did not succeed on the military level.”

“Israel’s elite military power will be destroyed in the South and in the Western Bekaa as well as in any place they might target in Lebanon,” he added.

The Hizbullah chief said that Lebanon’s internal disputes will not distract the resistance “from training and becoming stronger in order to defend our people and our country.”

In his speech, Nasrallah also expressed his condolences to the family of First Lieutenant Samer Hanna, a Lebanese Armed Forces pilot who was killed last week in the South during an attack on his helicopter.

“I address the father of the martyr Samer Hanna,” he said, “and send you my deepest condolences. And I tell you that I truly understand what the family is enduring.”

Nasrallah own son Hadi, then 17, was killed in an operation against Israeli occupation forces in South lebanon in the late 1990s.

The resistance leader had harsh words for those of his party’s critics who used the incident in a bid to “instigate strife between the military and the resistance.”

Such incidents take place in militaries everywhere, he said, adding that when Hizbullah members are killed in training, for instance, the news is reported only to their families.

“We are most cautious in our relations with the army,” Nasrallah said, adding that although some members of his party had been killed by Lebanese Army troops (a reference to the Mar Mikael riots in January), “we were careful to avoid entering into any conflict with the army.”

He also said that the fighter who fired on Hanna’s helicopter had come forward to take responsibility and noted that Hizbullah had turned him over so that the military and the judiciary could take the necessary actions.

“I reject any and all accusations,” he added, that the fighter in question “is a criminal.”

Initial investigations indicate that the fighter fired on the helicopter because he had mistaken it for an Israeli one about to drop off soldiers.

In a clear response to accusations by some Salafi groups that Hizbullah was monopolizing resistance in Lebanon, Nasrallah said that his party did not mind any group taking part in its fight against Israel. “No one is forbidding you from resisting the enemy,” he said. “Go ahead and do it.” - The Daily Star

Written by Hisham · Filed Under LEBANON NEWS, POLITICS 

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