BEIRUT: Hezbollah marked the fifth anniversary of the assassination of military commander Imad Mughniyeh during a ceremony Wednesday in a village in south Lebanon.

The gathering took place at a complex in Mughniyeh’s home village of Teir Dibba, a site that is named after the late Hezbollah commander.

Former Baalbek-Hermel MP Ibrahim Amin Sayyed, the head of Hezbollah’s politburo, delivered an address in which he criticized party’s domestic rivals for dealing with events inside and outside the country based on whether the incident “harms or benefits the resistance – if it harms the resistance, they support it, and if it helps the resistance, they openly stand against it.”

Amin Sayyed laid out three “dangers” facing the region: the existence of Israel, a United States beset by political turbulence as a result of uprisings in Arab countries, and rising sectarian tension, primarily among Muslims.

Wreaths of flowers were also laid at the site by a number of Palestinian factions, as well as representatives of local municipalities, and the Baath Party. Mughniyeh was assassinated in Damascus on Feb. 14, 2008.