The head of Lebanon's Hezbollah movement on Sunday urged broad support for his group's fight in Syria, saying it was engaged in an existential battle against the Islamic State group. Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged for the first time that his powerful Shiite group was fighting across all of Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
And he called specifically on his fiercest critics in Lebanon to back his intervention across the border, warning that their support for Assad's opponents would not save them from jihadists.
"Today we are facing a kind of danger that is unprecedented in history, which targets humanity itself," Nasrallah said, speaking ahead of Monday's anniversary of the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon in 2000.
"This is not a threat to the resistance in Lebanon on to one sect or to the regime in Syria or the government in Iraq or a group in Yemen," he added, addressing an audience in the southern town of Nabatiyeh in a telecast broadcast on a big screen.
"This is a danger to everyone. No one should bury their heads in the sand.
"We invite everyone in Lebanon and the region to take responsibility and confront this danger and end their silence and hesitation and neutrality."
The speech was a full-throated defence of Hezbollah's role in Syria, where it has acted as a key force multiplier for Assad's embattled regime since an uprising that began in March 2011.
The intervention has raised tensions in Lebanon, where many Sunnis back the uprising against Assad and accuse Hezbollah of drawing the country into Syria's war.
"We are fighting alongside our Syrian brothers, alongside the army and the people and the popular resistance in Damascus and Aleppo and Deir Ezzor and Qusayr and Hasakeh and Idlib," he said.
"We are present today in many places and we will be present in all the places in Syria that this battle requires."
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