World leaders react to Israel’s killing of Nasrallah
PARIS—World leaders warned of potential repercussions on Saturday after Lebanese militant group Hezbollah announced its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike on a suburb of Beirut.
The killing of the Iran-backed group’s chief has intensified fears of all-out war in the Middle East.
US President Joe Biden welcomed “a measure of justice.”
Iran’s first Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref warned Israel that Nasrallah’s death would “bring about their destruction,” Iran’s ISNA news agency quoted him as saying.
The foreign ministry of Iran, which finances and arms Hezbollah, said Nasrallah’s work will continue after his death. “His sacred goal will be realized in the liberation of Quds (Jerusalem), God willing,” spokesperson Nasser Kanani posted on X.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced five days of public mourning.
Biden said Nasrallah’s death was “a measure of justice for his many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis and Lebanese civilians.”
Washington supports Israel’s right to defend itself against “Iranian-supported terrorist groups” and the “defense posture” of US forces in the region would be “further enhanced,” Biden added in a statement.
Vice President Kamala Harris said Nasrallah was “a terrorist with American blood on his hands” and said she would “always support Israel’s right to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis.”
Russia’s foreign ministry said “we decisively condemn the latest political murder carried out by Israel” and urged it to “immediately cease military action” in Lebanon.
Israel would “bear full responsibility” for the “tragic” consequences the killing could bring to the region, the ministry added in a statement.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described Nasrallah as “the leader of a terrorist organization that attacked and killed innocent civilians, causing immense suffering across the region.”
Immediate ceasefire
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said in a post on X that he had spoken with the Lebanese premier.
“We agreed on the need for an immediate ceasefire to bring an end to the bloodshed. A diplomatic solution is the only way to restore security and stability for the Lebanese and Israeli people,” he said.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot demanded Israel “immediately stop its strikes in Lebanon” and said it was opposed to any ground operation in the country.
France also “calls on other actors, notably Hezbollah and Iran, to abstain from any action that could lead to additional destabilization and regional conflagration,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
UN chief Antonio Guterres said he was “gravely concerned by the dramatic escalation of events in Beirut in the last 24 hours.”
Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose unprecedented Oct. 7 attack on Israel sparked the devastating war in Gaza that drew in fellow Iran-backed groups including Hezbollah, called Nasrallah’s killing “a cowardly terrorist act.”
“We condemn in the strongest terms this barbaric Zionist aggression and targeting of residential buildings,” Hamas said in a statement.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas offered his “deep condolences” to Lebanon for the deaths of Nasrallah and civilians, who “fell as a result of the brutal Israeli aggression,” according to a statement from his office.
The Iran-backed Yemeni rebels, who have been firing on ships in the Red Sea in solidarity with Hamas, said in a statement that Nasrallah’s killing “will increase the flame of sacrifice, the heat of enthusiasm, the strength of resolve” against Israel, with their leader vowing Nasrallah’s death “will not be in vain.”
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country maintains diplomatic relations with Israel but who has been a sharp critic of its offensive in Gaza, said on X that Lebanon was being subjected to a “genocide,” without referring directly to Nasrallah.
In a post on X, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel called the killing a “cowardly targeted assassination” that “seriously threatens regional and global peace and security, for which Israel bears full responsibility with the complicity of the United States.”
