Hezbollah has elected its deputy secretary-general, Naim Qassem, to succeed slain leader Hassan Nasrallah, the group announced on October 29.
Hezbollah is an armed group and political party that controls much of southern Lebanon and which is designated a terrorist organization by the United States, although the European Union has only blacklisted its military wing, not its political party.
SEE ALSO: Israel Is Trying To 'Weaken' Hezbollah As a Political And Economic Force"Hezbollah's (governing) Shura Council agreed to elect...Sheikh Naim Qassem as secretary-general of the party," the Iran-backed group said in a statement, more than a month after Nasrallah's killing.
"We pledge to God and the spirit of our highest and most precious martyr, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the martyrs, the fighters of the Islamic resistance, and our steadfast, patient and loyal people, to work together to achieve Hezbollah's principles and the goals, and to keep the flame of resistance alight and its banner raised until victory is achieved," the statement said.
In recent weeks, Israel has been engaged in a campaign of air strikes and a ground invasion of southern Lebanon that has targeted Hezbollah's leadership and military capabilities in response to numerous rocket and missile attacks by the group. Those attacks have intensified since the Israeli Army invaded the Gaza Strip following a terrorist attack by its Hamas rulers that killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took some 250 hostages.
Nasrallah died last month in an Israeli air strike. His expected successor, Hashem Safieddine, was also killed by the Israelis a week later.
Qassem, born in Beirut in 1953 into a family originally from the south near the border with Israel, has been Hezbollah's deputy-secretary general since 1991, when he was nominated as second-in-command to Abbas al-Musawi, the group's leader who himself was killed in an Israeli strike in 1992.
Qassem kept his position when Nasrallah took over.
After Nasrallah largely disappeared from public view in the aftermath of Hezbollah's 2006 war with Israel, Qassem remained the most visible senior figure of the group and has often acted as a spokesman for Hezbollah.
Qassem has been involved in organizing Hezbollah's election campaigns for Lebanon's parliament since the group first participated in elections in 1992.