Hezbollah urges Islamic world to put aside sectarian divide in face of IS threat

BEIRUT (Xinhua) - Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah urged late Friday night the Islamic world to put aside sectarian differences in the face of an "existential threat" imposed by the insurgency of the Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq.

According to the Annahar Daily report, Nasrallah warned in a late nigh speech that Lebanon's "disassociation policy" is not a " realistic" and "correct" approach to protect the country from the danger of the extremist Sunni fighters.

The Islamic State, an al-Qaida breakaway group, now controls cities in Iraq's Tigris and Euphrates valleys north and west of Baghdad, and a section of Syria stretching from the Iraqi border in the east to Aleppo in the northwest.

"This group has committed massacres, killed prisoners and civilians in Iraq and Syria, and also killed people close to it, like al-Nusra fighters, and then assassinated people of other Islamist factions in Deir Ezzor and Aleppo in Syria and Iraq," he said.

He also said "the massacres that have been committed harmed Sunnis primarily and the ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and Levant) did not spare anyone in Iraq like Kurds, Yazidis, Shiites, Christians, Turkmen... this example has nothing to do with Islam."

"I call on every Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi, Syrian and any Gulf national to leave sectarian intolerance behind and think that this phenomenon is not a threat against Shiites only. No one should regard this battle as a sectarian one," he said.

In late June, the ISIL proclaimed the establishment of the a caliphate, and urged Muslims worldwide to flock there and wage holy war. It also renamed itself simply as the Islamic State.

Also, a militant group called "The Free Sunni Baalbeck Brigades, " which has claimed responsibility for several car bombs and suicide attacks that struck Muslim Shiite areas and strongholds of the Lebanese Shiite Movement Hezbollah since last year. It has also pledged allegiance to Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al- Baghdadi.

Hezbollah has garnered a wide-scale support from the Arab world after 2006, when the group stood up against Israel's military actions for 34 days.

But this Shi'ite Muslim group's regional backing has dwindled ever since its militants crossed the border into Syrian to fight alongside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces against Sunni Muslim rebels.

"The Free Sunni Baalbeck Brigades" is believed to be linked to militant Syrian opposition groups fighting to oust Assad. The same group has also issued statements in the past, in which it warned more strikes against Hezbollah if the militia continues to send fighters to Syria to fight alongside al-Assad's forces.