Sydney mosques have overflowed with hundreds of mourners paying respects to slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Huge crowds spilled onto the street outside the Al Rahman Mosque in Kingsgrove, in Sydney’s southwest, for Monday night’s service commemorating Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon on Friday.
Hezbollah, a militant and political group hailing from Lebanon, has been listed as a terrorist organisation in Australia and his death was hailed by President Joe Biden as ‘a measure of justice for his many victims’.
Cars were double parked on the surrounding footpaths as an estimated crowd of around 1,000 people, mostly wearing dark clothes, gathered for the 7pm start of the vigil, which will be held across three nights.
The first night of the vigil was live-streamed – with the Al Rahman Mosque writing on Facebook that it would be holding a service ‘for the souls of the righteous martyrs, the master of resistance, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’.
Some mourners were turned away as the mosque reached capacity and instead had to watch the vigil from their phones, the Daily Telegraph reported.
Two other Sydney mosques in the city’s south are also staging three-day vigils.
The Sayeda Zainab Centre in Banksia will be holding mourning councils for Nasrallah from Sunday to Tuesday.
Hundreds of mourners have gathered outside the Al Rahman Mosque in Sydney’s southwest to pay respects to slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah
Al Zahra Mosque in Arncliffe will also hold events over three days.
‘Three days of mourning will be held… for the soul of the leader of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the souls of the righteous martyrs who departed with him and all those who have been innocently slain as a result of the zionist aggression in Lebanon and Palestine,’ the mosque’s Facebook page said.
All three mosques practice the Shia branch of Islam, which is the dominant Muslim belief of Hezbollah and their backers in Iran.
Jewish groups called the services ‘deeply disturbing’.
‘Hezbollah is an organisation that conducts terror operations using cells throughout the world to hit non-military targets including community centres, planes and embassies,’ Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin told the publication.
‘This goes to the heart of public safety and national security and it requires a strong police response.’
Hezbollah was listed as a terrorist organisation in Australia in 2021.
On Sunday, small groups of young men, many masked, were seen at much larger pro-Palestinian rallies in Sydney and Melbourne carrying framed portraits of Nasrallah and waving the Hezbollah flag.
A number of mosques in Sydney will be holding three-day vigils to commemorate Nasrallah
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke blasted those protesters who were showing ‘any indication of support’ for a terrorist organisation, and threatened to cancel their visas.
‘It draws the immediate attention of our security agencies,’ Mr Burke said.
‘There is a higher level of scrutiny if anyone is on a visa. I have made clear from day one, that I will consider refusing and cancelling visas for anyone who seeks to incite discord in Australia.’
Rally organisers in Melbourne told AAP the group carrying Hezbollah flags was not affiliated with those running the demonstration.
Islamic community leaders also said this group was not representative of the Muslim community in Australia or the protest, which was calling for Israel to stop military operations in Gaza and Lebanon, where they are fighting Hezbollah.
‘They are definitely a minority. An absolute, tiny minority,’ Islamic Council of Victoria’s president Adel Salman told The Australian.
Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Hezbollah’s headquarters in Lebanon on Friday
‘For my own experience, my knowledge of the community, there is no support of Hezbollah, no love of Hezbollah, right now, this is all about support for the Lebanese people.’
Meanwhile fighting has intensified in the Middle East as Israel is expected to launch a ground assault into Lebanon to oust Hezbollah.
Elite Israeli commandos were reported to be targeting the group’s infrastructure, including weapon sites and control centres, as it scrambles to recover from the loss of Nasrallah.
‘They are targeting key sites which have been built across the border zone,’ an Israeli official told The Telegraph.
IDF tanks have massed on the northern border ahead of an anticipated incursion into Lebanon despite pressure from Israel’s allies to de-escalate at once.
Hezbollah said its militants were braced and ‘ready’ for war, as Lebanon prepared to deploy its own army to the south, fearing a collapse into all-out war.
Rockets continue to be fired by Hezbollah into northern Israel since the war in Gaza broke out last October, in response to the Israeli bombing of the Strip.
Hundreds of Israeli tanks have lined up at the Lebanon border, with a ground invasion looming
Smoke billows from the area as a result of the Israeli army’s attacks on the town of Hiyam today
But with some 60,000 Israelis displaced from their homes and jobs in northern Israel by the attacks, Israel has vowed to vanquish Hezbollah from southern Lebanon.
In a week of heavy air strikes, Israel has reportedly taken out dozens of officials linked to Hezbollah by bombing their headquarters as well as killing Hamas and Iranian officials.
Hamas, which is fighting Israel in the Gaza strip, today announced that its leader in Lebanon had been killed by Israeli air strikes.
Hamas said its leader in Lebanon, Fateh Sherif Abu al-Amine, died today in a strike on the Al-Buss refugee camp in the southern city of Tyre – days after Hezbollah’s long-standing chief Nasrallah was killed in Beirut.
The group said al-Amine was killed with his wife, son and daughter in what it called a ‘terrorist and criminal assassination’.
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