Al Jazeera reports: Shia fighters from Hezbollah will keep fighting in Syria’s conflict alongside President Bashar al-Assad’s forces as long as necessary, the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah said.

Hezbollah has helped turn the tide in Assad’s favour this year, leading the recapture of the town of Qusair and fighting alongside government forces south of Damascus and in the northern city of Aleppo.

“As long as the reasons [to fight in Syria] remain, our presence there will remain,” Nasrallah said on Thursday in a speech in front of tens of thousands of Lebanese Shia marking the religious ceremony of Ashoura in southern Beirut.

“Our fighters are present on Syrian soil… to confront all the dangers it faces from the international, regional and takfiri attack on this country and region,” Nasrallah said, referring to the self-declared jihadist rebels fighting in Syria.

Takfiri is a term for a hardline Sunni Muslim who sees other Muslims as infidels, often as a justification for killing them. [Continue reading…]