Lebanon's
Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem delivers an address from an unknown
location, in this still image from video released on December 5, 2024.
Al Manar TV via REUTERS Purchase Licensing Rights
Hezbollah chief says group lost its supply route through Syria
BEIRUT,
Dec 14 (Reuters) - Hezbollah head Naim Qassem said on Saturday that the
Lebanese armed group had lost its supply route through Syria, in his
first comments since the toppling of President Bashar al-Assad nearly a week ago by a sweeping rebel offensive.
Under Assad, Iran-backed Hezbollah
used Syria to bring in weapons and other military equipment from Iran,
through Iraq and Syria and into Lebanon. But on Dec. 6, anti-Assad
fighters seized the border with Iraq and cut off that route, and two days later, Islamist rebels captured the capital Damascus.
"Yes,
Hezbollah has lost the military supply route through Syria at this
stage, but this loss is a detail in the resistance's work," Qassem said
in a televised speech on Saturday, without mentioning Assad by name.
"A new regime could come and this route could return to normal, and we could look for other ways," he added.
Hezbollah
started intervening in Syria in 2013 to help Assad fight rebels seeking
to topple him at that time. Last week, as rebels approached Damascus,
the group sent supervising officers to oversee a withdrawal of its
fighters there.
More than 50 years of Assad family rule has now been replaced with a transitional caretaker government put in place by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former al Qaeda affiliate that spearheaded the rebel offensive.
Qassem
said Hezbollah "cannot judge these new forces until they stabilise" and
"take clear positions", but said he hoped that the Lebanese and Syrian
peoples and governments could continue to cooperate.
"We
also hope that this new ruling party will consider Israel an enemy and
not normalise relations with it. These are the headlines that will
affect the nature of the relationship between us and Syria," Qassem
said.
Hezbollah and Israel exchanged fire across Lebanon's southern border for nearly a year in hostilities triggered by the Gaza war, before Israel went on the offensive in September, killing most of Hezbollah's top leadership.
Reporting by Maya Gebeily Editing by Mark Potter and Helen Popper