Son of Lebanon’s slain Hezbollah chief says his father’s final days were filled with rage

Son of Lebanon’s slain Hezbollah chief says his father’s final days were filled with rage

BEIRUT: This time last year, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was consumed by rage over Israel’s detonation of pagers worn by members of his group throughout Lebanon, according to his son. Days later, Nasrallah himself was assassinated by Israel.

The pager explosions and Nasrallah’s killing in an Israeli air attack on the southern suburbs of Beirut in September 2024 turned out to be the opening salvos of an Israeli assault that killed more than 4,000 people across Lebanon and destroyed swathes of the country’s south.

The war, which Israel said it conducted to end Hezbollah’s cross-border attacks in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza, shook Hezbollah’s hold on power in Lebanon, where the group is now under pressure to give up its arms.

Those developments were unimaginable a year ago when Hezbollah’s then-leader was confronted with the major intelligence breach in the communication devices that killed dozens of the group’s members and maimed thousands of others.