BEIRUT >> Hezbollah’s newly named leader Naim Kassem said in his first public comments aired Wednesday that the militant group will keep fighting in its ongoing war with Israel until it is offered cease-fire terms it deems acceptable.

“If the Israelis decide to stop the aggression, we say that we accept, but according to the conditions that we see as suitable,” Kassem said, speaking from an undisclosed location in a pre-recorded televised address. “We will not beg for a cease fire as we will continue (fighting)... no matter how long it takes.”

The speech came as international mediators have launched a new push for negotiated cease-fires in Lebanon and Gaza.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said 30 people were killed over the past 24 hours and 165 others were wounded, raising the total toll in Lebanon over the past year of conflict between Hezbollah and Israel to 2,822 killed and 12,937 wounded. The conflict escalated sharply last month and Israeli ground forces invaded southern Lebanon at the beginning of October. Some 1.2 million people have been displaced by the conflict in Lebanon according to government estimates.

In Israel, rockets, missiles, and drones launched by Hezbollah have killed at least 63 people, about half of them soldiers. More than 60,000 Israelis from towns and cities along the border have been evacuated from their homes for more than a year.

Kassem, a cleric and founding member of the Lebanese militant group, was named Tuesday to replace former longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Beirut suburb in late September. Kassem had served as Nasrallah’s deputy for more than three decades.

Several other high-ranking officials with the group, including Nasrallah’s presumptive successor, Hashem Safieddine, have also been killed in recent weeks, as the Israel-Hezbollah war has escalated in Lebanon.

Kassem said the series of blows dealt to the group in recent weeks — including pager and walkie-talkie explosions that targeted Hezbollah members in mid-September and the assassination of Nasrallah — had “hurt” the group, but he asserted that the group had been able to reorganize its ranks within eight days after Nasrallah’s death.

“Hezbollah’s capabilities are still available and compatible with a long war,” he said. He pointed to the steady stream of Israeli soldiers wounded and killed in southern Lebanon since Israeli forces launched a ground invasion on Oct. 1, and to a drone launched by Hezbollah that hit the home of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month. Netanyahu was not harmed.