Iran speaker to attend Nasrallah funeral

TEHRAN:

Iran's parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, will travel to Lebanon for the funeral of long-time Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Sunday, Iranian media reported.

Tens of thousands of people are expected to turn out in Beirut to farewell the Iran-backed group's leader.

An Israeli air strike killed Nasrallah on September 27 last year at the start of an all-out war between his group and Israel after roughly a year of lower-level conflict.

The massive air strike on Hezbollah's south Beirut stronghold also killed Abbas Nilforoushan, a senior commander in Iran's Quds Force -- the foreign operations arm of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.