Hezbollah says Lebanese militant killed in Syria airstrike

Israel’s justice minister Sunday, December 20, welcomed the death of Lebanese militant Samir Kantar but did not claim credit for the air strike in Syria that killed him, which Hezbollah said was an Israeli raid. Among the Israelis killed was a 4-year-old girl and her father.

The slain commander, Samir Kuntar, had been imprisoned in Israel for almost 30 years for leading a deadly resistance operation from southern Lebanon into northern Israel in 1979.

Qantar was killed when a number of rockets hit a building in the Damascus district of Jaramana in the early hours on Sunday, Syrian government loyalists said on social media.

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV said two Israeli warplanes that violated Syrian airspace fired four long-range missiles at the residential building in Jaramana Saturday night.

“With pride we mourn the martyrdom of the leader Samir Kuntar and we are honoured to join families of martyrs”, Bassam Kuntar said on his Facebook page.

Hezbollah has been engaged in the battles alongside the Syrian army against a almost five-year insurgency, which the Syrian government blames on a foreign plot, in which Israel is playing a role. Although Hizbullah is accusing the Israeli air force of carrying out the strike, Jerusalem, consistent with its policy regarding such actions, has not commented. Hezbollah’s leader has previously warned there would be retaliations if any Israelis attempted to hurt Hezbollah.

Kantar was a teenager when he and three other members of the Palestine Liberation Front infiltrated the Israeli village of Nahariya by sea from Lebanon. It ultimately traded him in 2008 along with four other Lebanese prisoners in exchange for the bodies of two of its soldiers.

Israeli officials did not confirm or deny their involvement in the act, but celebrated his death.

According to Mr Amidror, Mr Kantar was especially well placed to carry out such preparation due to his strong links with the Syrian Druze community, who are present on both the Syrian and the Israeli-occupied sides of the Golan Heights.

Gil Rabinovich, the former head of the Israeli military intelligence’s counterterrorism unit, said it was impossible to predict how Hezbollah would respond, in part because Israel has not claimed responsibility for Kantar’s killing.

Hezbollah, which operates mainly out of Syria and Lebanon and is a predominantly Shiite militia, has been increasing its military attacks in Syria in a joint effort with Russian Federation to support President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

The Associated Press reported that six other people also were killed in the strike in Jaramana, a neighborhood with an ethnically and religiously mixed population that includes many Druse and Christians, but which has become overcrowded with Syrians displaced from other areas.

Syria’s state media, which did not mention Kuntar, blamed “terrorist groups” for the attack and said it caused casualties.