Lebanese Militant Leader Killed By Israeli Airstrike

Lebanese militant leader Samir Qantar has been killed after a number of rockets hit a building in the Damascus district of Jaramana, according to Syrian government loyalists on social media.

Under the cover of night, the group broke into an apartment in the coastal town of Naharia, just 10 kilometres away from the Lebanese border, and kidnapped an Israeli man, Danny Haran, and his four-year-old daughter, Einat.

Kantar was known in Lebanon as “The Dean of Lebanese Prisoners” for serving the longest-ever sentence of 29 years in Israel.

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV aired footage of what it said was the residential building targeted in Saturday’s airstrike.

Kantar was described as becoming a “key figure” within Hezbollah since his 2008 release.

Israel’s official Channel Two television station on Sunday asserted that Kuntar had been leading Hezbollah military operations against Israel from inside Syrian territory.

Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu notably did not mention the attack which killed Mr Kantar in the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday.

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

Meanwhile, the leader of Hezbollah, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, announced that he will give a speech on Monday in which presumably he will discuss Qantar’s death, and the Syrian Parliament met and condemned Qantar’s killing, calling the attack a “terrorist crime”. A baby girl was also accidentally smothered by her mother as she hid in a cupboard in the same event.

Jaberi Ansari further expressed condolences to the family of Samir Qantar, his colleagues, the anti-Israeli resistance movement in Lebanon and Palestine and the Lebanese government and nation.

Kuntar was regarded as a national hero in Lebanon.

The rocket fire from the Hezbollah heartland of south Lebanon followed the death of Samir Kantar, a militant in the Shiite group notorious for the murder of three Israelis.

Haran’s widow Smadar told army radio on Sunday that “justice has been done, especially when we know that he has continued to be active in terrorism against us since his release”.

Although an Israeli official did not claim responsibility for Kantar’s death, he did laud his demise.

“Since Qantar’s return, he has also played an operational role, with the assistance of Iran and Syria, in building up Hezbollah’s terrorist infrastructure in the Golan Heights”, it said.

The airstrike was the latest in a series of suspected Israeli attacks on Hezbollah gunmen and convoys in Syria, where the militant group is supporting President Bashar al-Assad in the civil war.