FIRST ADMISSION Hezbollah has 100,000 fighters, Nasrallah says

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah declared for the first time on Monday that his group has 100,000 trained fighters. If true, this would be larger than the size of Lebanon’s armed forces, estimated at about 85,000.

“We have prepared [those fighters] with their diverse weapons to defend our territory, our oil and gas that is being robbed before the eyes of Lebanese, to protect the dignity and sovereignty of our country from any aggression [and] terrorism and not for internal fighting,” Nasrallah said in his first speech since seven people were killed in gunbattles on the streets of Beirut last Thursday.

Nasrallah accused the head of a right-wing Christian party, Samir Geagea, of seeking to ignite civil war.

Addressing Geagea directly, Nasrallah said: “Don’t miscalculate. Be wise and behave. Learn a lesson from all your wars and all our wars.”

At the end of the 15-year civil war in 1990, Hezbollah was the only group to retain its weapons.