Israel cancels patrols on Golan, Lebanese borders due to security fears

The Lebanese group Hezbollah says Samir Kantar, who was the longest-held Lebanese prisoner in Israel, has been killed in an Israeli airstrike in Syria.

Kantar was convicted of killing three Israelis, including a four-year-old girl, in an attack on an apartment block in Nahariya in north Israel in 1979.

Kantar and four Hezbollah guerrillas were freed in 2008 in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah in 2006.

Israel welcomed news of the death of Samir Kuntar – killed in a blast in a building near Damascus – saying that he had been planning future attacks against Israel from Syrian territory.

“If the Israelis imagine that by targeting Samir Kantar they have closed an account, they are very wrong because they know and will know that they have opened accounts that are not closed with a treacherous missile”, senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine said at the funeral. Yesterday she told Israel’s Army Radio that Kantar’s killing was “historic justice”.

Supporters of the group walked behind his coffin, which was draped in a yellow Hezbollah flag, at the funeral Monday. Responding to earlier media reports that Israel had fired the missiles from with Israeli air space rather than Syrian, Nasrallah said that “the location of the Israeli jet when it struck are details that we will not entertain tonight”.

Over the course of the chaotic Syrian conflict, Israeli warplanes have hit targets inside Syria several times, with most of those strikes said to be against weapons deliveries meant for Hezbollah.

Israel had accused Kuntar of organizing armed groups in Syria near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

This would lead him, in 1976, to join the Palestinian Liberation Front (PLF)-a minor armed group that has variously joined and broken apart from several leftist Palestinian groups throughout the years.

Three rockets were fired from southern Lebanon towards Israel today, and Israel retaliated with some eight rounds of 120mm mortar, but no casualties have so far been reported from either side, according to United Nations peacekeepers.

Although the Israeli authorities have not claimed responsibility for the strike, a number of Israeli leaders have praised the operation.

While Amidror did not indicate whether the Israeli Air Force was responsible for the strike that killed Kuntar, he noted that the terrorist’s death was “good news” for Jerusalem, and added that “many people in Syria have their own reason to kill these guys who are helping Assad”.

The incident coincides with a report released Sunday by Human Rights Watch that accuses Russian Federation and the Syrian government of using cluster bombs – indiscriminate scattershot munitions – that have killed dozens of civilians in Syria in recent weeks.

The test comes amid soaring tensions between Israel and Hezbollah following the killing of one of its fighters, Samir Kantar, over the weekend.