Distinguished Lebanese Political Activist Naqqash Dies

Date: 22 February 2021 - 21:36

News ID: ۸۷۸۹۳

BEIRUT (Press TV) – Prominent Lebanese political activist and veteran campaigner in the Islamic resistance front, Anis al-Naqqash, has passed away at the age of 70 after contracting the new coronavirus.
Naqqash lost his brief battle to the highly contagious virus on Monday morning. He had been admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) of a hospital in the Syrian capital city of Damascus a few days ago.
Hailing him as a "thinker and freedom fighter,” the official SANA news agency said he was "admitted into intensive care two days ago... because his health deteriorated as a result of Covid-19.”
His body is scheduled to be transported to the Lebanese capital city of Beirut on Tuesday for funeral.
Naqqash was born in 1951 in Beirut. He attended al-Maqasid al-Islamiyyah School and from a young age participated in protest movements, including a demonstration in solidarity with Algerian activist Djamila Bouhired, who opposed the French colonial rule of Algeria.
He joined the Palestinian Fatah movement in 1964, and was active in the anti-Zionist resistance front. Among his activities to boost resistance against the occupation, he trained pro-Palestinian fighters at a training camp in southern Lebanon at the time.
Naqqash even went on a hunger strike to protest the inaction of Arab states, when commandos from the Zionist regime army’s elite Sayeret Matkal destroyed 14 aircraft at Beirut International Airport at the evening of December 28, 1968.
When the Zionist regime invaded Lebanon in 1978, he moved to the southern part of the country and substantially helped the resistance against the aggression of southern Lebanon.
Naqqash then decided to leave Fatah and establish a Lebanese faction, but members of the Palestinian movement still paid great tribute to him despite his separation.
He established two groups in Lebanon’s southern towns of Kfarchouba and Bint Jbeil, whose members later formed the leadership of the Lebanese resistance movement.
Naqqash pledged allegiance to late founder of the Islamic Republic Imam Khomeini following the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.
He had an important role in facilitating coordination between Palestinian resistance groups and Iranian authorities, and had strong ties with Iranian officials.
He was very close to Imad Mughniyeh, a senior commander of Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement who was assassinated in a joint U.S.-Zionist car bomb attack in the Kafar Souseh neighborhood of southwestern Damascus in February 2008.