Pictures of Hezbollah fighters killed in Syria

A Syrian opposition website has published hundreds of names and profile pictures of men it claims were Hezbollah Lebanon fighters who died in battle in Syria.[1] To double-check the authenticity of the photos, Naame Shaam chose a random sample from the pictures and tried to verify them from other sources, including videos of burials and memorials organised by Hezbollah Lebanon for its martyrs, obituaries on Hezbollah supporters’ chat forums and Facebook pages, Lebanese media and so on.[2]

We managed to verify some of the names and pictures from other sources but not all of them. This may be due to the fact the Hezbollah Lebanon, in an attempt to suppress such evidence, has reportedly started to ‘bribe’ the martyrs’ families (offering them between $20,000 and $25,000 of Iranian money, according to some media reports) if they accept to not announce the death in public and not hold a public burial ceremony.

Naame Shaam’s correspondent in southern Lebanon was told by a number of families of young men who died in Syria that “the prize of martyrdom in Syria” is $50,000 for each young and unmarried fighter who dies. The family of older men with children are paid more, and the orphaned children would be supported by Hezbollah for years.

No one – not even Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah – today denies that thousands of Hezbollah fighters have been fighting alongside regime forces inside Syria. This is something that both Hezbollah and the Iranian government used to deny before the battle for Qussayr, Syria, in summer 2013. And it is our government that is funding this senseless killing from the Iranian public purse.

NOTES:

[1] The pictures were published in installment. Part 6 can be found here, with a link at the bottom to previous parts: http://www.all4syria.info/Archive/123334

[2] Here are just a few examples:

http://janoubia.com/125975

http://tinyurl.com/mn2kqno

)

)

)

)

 

•