Profile: Sheikh Nabil Qaouq, Hezbollah official and noted cleric assassinated by Israel

By Alireza Akbari

Sheikh Nabil Yahya Qaouq, a prominent Lebanese scholar and Hezbollah official, was assassinated in an Israeli airstrike on Saturday in Al-Shiyah, a neighborhood in the southern suburb of Beirut, Dahiye.

In a statement on Sunday, the Lebanese resistance movement confirmed the assassination of the veteran political and military figure a day after the attack took place.

Dozens of Israeli airstrikes targeted residential buildings in southern Lebanon on the same day, with the Bekaa Valley, located east of Beirut, heavily impacted.

In the village of Nabi Shayth, multiple buildings were reduced to rubble, claiming many civilian lives.

Sheikh Qaouq was born on May 20, 1964, in Abba, a small town in southern Lebanon. He held numerous organizational roles in various Hezbollah units over the years.

“The leadership of Hezbollah announces, with great honor, to the people of resistance, the nation of fighters, and to the religious seminaries in Lebanon and abroad, the martyrdom of His Eminence, the honorable scholar and fighter Sheikh Nabil Qaouq,” said a statement issued by Hezbollah.

The movement extended condolences to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and Nabil's family and comrades.

According to the statement, Sheikh Qauoq was a “knowledgeable, mission-driven scholar and a great fighter, always present on the battlefronts of jihad” against the Zionist entity and its backers.

He was close to the fighters on the front lines and spent his noble life in the fields of struggle, sacrifice, and giving, the statement noted.

From 1991 to 2010, he served as Hezbollah’s organizational official for the southern region of Lebanon, a critical area during the resistance against Israeli occupation.

After that, he became the deputy head of Hezbollah's executive council, a position he held until 2018.

He also served as the head of the preventive security unit in the Islamic resistance, a role he maintained until his martyrdom on Saturday.

Lebanese and Palestinian resistance groups paid glowing tributes to the martyred Hezbollah official and pledged to keep alive his illustrious legacy.

In a statement, Palestinian Islamic Jihad extended its “deepest condolences” to the supporters of the Islamic resistance on the assassination of the member of Hezbollah's Central Council “in a treacherous and criminal Zionist raid.”

“The blood that flows on the altar of freedom, liberation, and support for the oppressed, in the face of the forces of arrogance and global imperialism led by the head of terrorism, the United States, will undoubtedly bloom into a victorious triumph, whether sooner or later,” wrote Gaza-based Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades in a statement.

“We vow to honor the spilled blood by continuing the struggle and fighting until this occupation is expelled from all our occupied lands.”

On Sunday, relentless Israeli airstrikes killed at least 105 people and injured approximately 359 others in different parts of Lebanon.

The strikes marked one of the bloodiest days in the country, second only to a recent series of deadly detonations involving walkie-talkies and pager blasts that claimed over 500 lives on a single day.

The Bekaa Valley, Baalbek-Hermel Governorate, and the southern suburbs of Beirut were also bombed in a wave of Israeli airstrikes on Sunday.

According to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health, the strikes flattened two residential buildings in Ain al-Delb, near Sidon in southern Lebanon, killing 32 people, many of whom were displaced families sheltering in the area. The attacks continued on Monday as well, claiming dozens of more lives.

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