Anthony Albanese declared that no one in Australia should mourn slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Peter Dutton demanded memorial services for him be cancelled, as a row over displays of support for the terrorist organisation deepened political and social divisions.

People gathered at several Shiite Muslim mosques in Sydney on Tuesday evening for services for Nasrallah, whose death in an Israeli airstrike on a Hezbollah’s bunker in Beirut on Friday presaged the first ground incursions into Lebanon in the widening Middle East conflict.