By Hamza Takeen
BEIRUT
Secretary-General of Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah movement Hassan Nasrallah said on Monday that the current turmoil in the Middle East region was a "political", not "sectarian" conflict between the region's Sunnis and Shiites.
Addressing thousands of supporters in southern Beirut on the religious festival of Ashura, Nasrallah said that his movement was waging war against radical Islamists and Israel, not against Sunnis.
"Portraying the current conflict as one between Shiites and Sunnis is a major mistake," Nasrallah said in his second appearance among his supporters in a few months.
The Shiite leader used to address his diehard supporters in past years through videoconference. In July, however, he appeared among his supporters for the first time in years on the occasion of Jerusalem Day.
Nasrallah said that what happens in the Middle East region would decide its future for years to come.
"Our battle is against radicals who want to crush everybody else and against Israel," Nasrallah said.
"This is not a battle against Sunnis," he added, going on to call on Sunni Muslims to practice caution in regard to the current developments.
Hezbollah has embroiled thousands of its troops in Syria's civil war, which has been raging for almost four years now, fighting alongside with the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against the mainly Sunni opposition.
The war has left tens of thousands of people dead and millions of others displaced both inside and outside Syria in what international humanitarian organizations describe as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
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