A giant portrait of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (R) and his presume successor Hashem Safieddine watches over Beirut's airport highway ahead of their funeral on Sunday. (Credit: Ibrahim Amro/AFP)
BEIRUT — Thousands of people have arrived in Beirut ahead of Sunday's funeral for slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and his presumed successor Hashem Safieddine. By the time of the ceremony, that number is expected to be within the hundreds of thousands.
Internal Security Forces (ISF) have announced road closures and parking restrictions throughout much of central and south Beirut starting at midnight and significant paramedic and first-responder teams will be deployed starting in Sunday morning.
The ceremony is scheduled for 1 p.m. at Beirut Sports City Stadium in the Ghobeiri neighborhood of Beirut's southern suburbs and will be followed by a funeral procession leading from the arena to the place in Burj al-Barajneh where the iconic Hezbollah leader will be laid to rest.
Local outlet al-Diyar claimed on Saturday that more than 400,000 people from Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman had arrived in Beirut by Saturday, but several factors have prevented people from Yemen and Iran from making the trip.
Restrictions imposed by the Houthis on the airport in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa have also prevented all but one flight from Yemen from landing in Beirut in the lead up to the funeral, according to Ali Sherri, Yemeni political leader of the Zaydite party Hezb al-Haqq. “If these restrictions had not been in force," he said, "thousands of Yemenis, without exaggeration, would have made the trip to attend Hassan Nasrallah's funeral.”
Iranian media reported that the country's Speaker of Parliament Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf will be in Lebanon for the joint funeral, along with a number of parliamentarians, as well as state officials. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is also reportedly part of the delegation coming from Iran.
However, no Iranian planes have been allowed to land in Beirut in the last week following Israeli claims that they were being used to smuggle money into the country for Hezbollah, so it's likely that Iranians planning to attend the funeral will fly through Iraq.
An Iraqi transportation ministry official, who spoke to Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said that from Iraq, up to 6,000 people had flown to Beirut over the past days. Flights from Iraq, where Hezbollah has a huge following among Iraqi Shiites, have been full for days on end. Airfares from regional capitals to Beirut have jumped to as high as $2,000 and hotels are at 90 percent capacity.
On Sept. 27, Israel dropped dozens of 2,000-pound bunker-buster bombs on Beirut's densely populated southern suburbs to kill Nasrallah, who was in the party's underground command center. A U.S. Defense Department official told Washington Post that he had never seen so many bombs used against a single target as in the Nasrallah strike. At least four buildings were completely leveled and an unknown number of civilians killed. A week later, Israel did the same to kill his supposed successor and cousin Hashem Safieddine.
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