Hizbollah chief Nasrallah haunts Israel

Beirut, July 27: When Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah speaks, West Asia takes notice.

Revered by many Muslims as a hero and hated by Israelis as a cold-blooded terrorist, Nasrallah is cementing his reputation as a man who delivers on his threats.

His ability to back up warnings with action throughout the 15-day war between Hizbollah fighters and Israel has won the charismatic cleric popular support in the Arab world.

A Lebanese politician described him as the most important Arab leader since Egypt's pan-Arab leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. ''O beloved Nasrallah, strike Tel Aviv,'' thousands have chanted in protests in several Arab and Muslim capitals.

In his latest appearance, a taped televised message broadcast early today, Nasrallah vowed Hizbollah guerrillas would inflict heavy casualties on Israeli ground forces in south Lebanon.

A few hours later, Hizbollah guerrillas killed up to 13 Israeli soldiers in fierce fighting in the key frontier town of Bint Jbeil, the highest Israeli death toll in a single incident in Lebanon for more than 20 years.

''We will fight in Bint Jbeil... and we will fight in every village, town, position and post,'' Nasrallah said.

''We fight a guerrilla warfare... the important thing is what losses we inflict on the Israeli enemy.''

South of Haifa

More ominously, he said that Hizbollah, which ignited the war by capturing two Israeli soldiers in a July 12 cross-border raid, rejected U S truce terms -- describing them as humiliating -- and vowed to take the war deeper into Israel. ''We will not allow anyone to take away our dignity,'' Nasrallah said. ''The limit of our bombardment will not remain Haifa, regardless of the enemy's response.'' Hizbollah has hit Haifa, Israel's third largest city 35 km south of Lebanon, for the first time with rockets, fulfilling Nasrallah's warning when Israel launched its attacks.

Beirut-born Nasrallah, who took up religious studies in Najaf in Iraq, takes the strategic military decisions but is not involved in Hizbollah battlefield tactics.

In a telephone call to Hizbollah television shortly after Israeli warplanes destroyed his office and home in south Beirut, Nasrallah announced that an Israeli warship off Beirut was hit by rockets, causing casualties.

Four Israeli sailors were killed in the attack which followed Nasrallah's vow to provide ''surprises on the battlefield''.

Nasrallah became Hizbollah leader after Israel assassinated his predecessor Abbas Musawi in a 1992 helicopter attack.

Born in 1960 in Beirut, Nasrallah joined the Shi'ite Amal movement when his family moved to the southern village of Bassouriyeh to escape the civil war that erupted in 1975.

He took up religious studies in Najaf, the centre of Shi'ite learning in Iraq, until the authorities expelled him in 1978. Back in Lebanon, he joined Hizbollah in 1982 and travelled to Qom in Iran seven years later to resume theological studies.

Married with three surviving children, Nasrallah lost his eldest son Hadi, who was killed at 18 fighting the Israelis.

The Hizbollah chief, who has praised Palestinian suicide bombings, is viewed by Israelis as an Islamist terrorist leader, but he has also won their grudging respect.

''The Israelis take him very seriously,'' said Timur Goksel, former spokesman of U N peacekeepers in south Lebanon. ''He reads, studies his enemy and that's why Hizbollah succeeded.''

Reuters