Nasrallah: Hezbollah will stay in Syria as long as needed
Terror group leader addresses tens of thousands of Shiites marking Day of Ashoura in second public appearance in two days
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Thursday the group, which has been fighting alongside President Bashar Assad's forces in Syria's civil war, would stay in Syria for as long as necessary.
"As long as the reasons (to fight in Syria) remain, our presence there will remain," Nasrallah said in a speech to tens of thousands of Lebanese Shiites marking the religious ceremony of Ashoura in southern Beirut.
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"Our fighters are present on Syrian soil...to confront all the dangers it faces from the international, regional and takfiri attack on this country and region," Nasrallah said, referring to the foreign Islamist rebels fighting in Syria.
Syria's 2-1/2 year-old civil war has polarized the Middle East between Sunni Muslim powers such as Turkey and the Gulf Arab states who support the Sunni rebels, and Shii'te Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah who back Assad, from the Alawite faith which is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.
Hezbollah fighters led the fight to recapture the Syrian border town of Qusair earlier this year and activists say they have also been fighting alongside Assad's forces south of the capital Damascus and in the northern city of Aleppo.
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