The public funeral of the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was attended by hundreds of thousands of mourners on Sunday at the Camille Chamoun Sports City Stadium in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital. 

Nasrallah was killed by an Israeli airstrike in an apartment complex in the capital roughly five months ago.

The nearly half-year delay was due to fears of an Israeli attack, according to a report by Al Jazeera.

Photos posted by the Israeli Defense Forces showed Israeli warplanes flying low over the funeral in an effort to taunt the group.

"The Israeli Air Force jets currently circling the skies of Beirut over Hassan Nasrallah's funeral are sending a clear message: Whoever threatens to destroy Israel and attacks Israel - that will be their end,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said.

Despite Israel’s show of force, attendees gathered in and around the stadium to pay their respects to the late Shia cleric and militant leader. Hezbollah’s yellow flags and large images of Nasrallah were displayed throughout the area.

The coffins of the late Hezbollah leader and his comrade Hashem Seifeddine, who was killed just days after replacing Nasrallah as the group’s leader October, were paraded through the streets of Beirut to a Shia shrine as their final resting place.

In a televised address, Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem promised to lead the group to “continue on this path, even if we are all martyred and even if our homes are destroyed over our heads.”

By Nasrallah’s orders, Hezbollah began firing rockets along Israel's northern border on Oct. 8, 2023, just one day after Hamas launched its attack into Israel, killing 1,200 and injuring over 5,000. 

Israel would fire back, and as hostilities continued, Israeli airstrikes struck deep within Lebanon’s southern interior, destroying numerous residential districts in Beirut. Nasrallah would be assassinated in one of these airstrikes in September.

Hezbollah then successfully repelled an Israeli invasion into southern Lebanon, and the two sides would agree to a ceasefire in November. 

However, the Shia group’s victory was pyrrhic at best. Since October 2023, 3,800 Lebanese have been killed and one million have been displaced, according to the Lebanese government. Much of Hezbollah’s strategic military infrastructure would be lost, along with many of its leaders.

The assassination, as well as Hezbollah’s overall weakened state, is a major morale blow to Iran and its Middle Eastern proxies. It tests the strength of a decades-long relationship that helped build the Shia group to what it is today.

Nasrallah was a key figure in Hezbollah’s 1982 founding—backed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to expel Israeli forces that began occupying southern Lebanon that same year, as the 15-year long Lebanese Civil War was in full swing.

Succeeding Abbas al-Musawi as Secretary-General in 1992 after his assassination by Israel, Nasrallah led the new militant group to drive Israeli forces out of Lebanon in 2000 and repel further large-scale attacks in 2006. Under his leadership, Hezbollah became Iran’s most powerful proxy within the Axis of Resistance, which includes Hamas, the Houthis, and Iraqi Shia militias.

Since 1997 however, the U.S. has designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization due to attacks on Americans, including the 1984 U.S. Embassy bombing in Beirut.

Despite being on the terror list, Hezbollah has been seen by some in the Arab and Islamic world as the only force in the region who for decades has been able to repel Israeli aggression into Arab territory.