Rockets fired from Lebanon strike northern Israel – 12/20/2015 8:31:33 PM

In a possible first response, three rockets were fired into Israel from Lebanon late Sunday. There have been no reports of injuries in Israel, or Lebanon, according to the BBC.

All three rockets reportedly landed near Shlomi, a small town near the Lebanese border, while sirens sounded in Nahariya, a larger coastal city about 10 kilometers southwest.

While Israel did not take responsibility for the strikes, several Israeli government officials and former military officers let it be known they were not sad to learn of Kuntar’s untimely demise.

Meanwhile, a Lebanese militant notorious for the murder of three Israelis, including a four-year-old girl, has been killed in an Israeli air raid near the Syrian capital, his Hezbollah movement said.

“The dean of liberated detainees from Israeli prisons, brother Mujahid Samir Kuntar, was martyred along with several Syrian citizens in the strike”, Hizbullah said in a statement condemning the air strike.

Israeli military sources told AFP that one rocket crashed into the Galilee region and the impact of another was heard.

“This is a serious incident in violation of UN Security Council resolution 1701 and is clearly directed at undermining stability in the area”, UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) Commander Major-General Luciano Portolano said in a statement, referring to the resolution establishing a ceasefire after fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.

State news agency SANA also said that army units and other pro-regime forces had seized control of Khan Tuman and neighbouring farms.

Hezbollah’s official media said Kuntar would be buried on Monday in a Shi’ite cemetery in its main stronghold of Dahiya in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Kantar was 16 at the time, and a member of the Palestinian militant group the Palestine Liberation Front.

As the attack unfolded, the girl’s mother hid inside a crawl space and accidentally smothered her crying two-year-old daughter, fearing Kantar would find them.

Hezbollah had recently chosen Kuntar to lead the group’s operations in southern Syria along the frontier of the Israeli-held part of the Golan Heights.

“Israel is believed to have carried out a number of attacks inside Syria during its civil conflict, targeting Hezbollah”. He had been released in a 2008 swap for the bodies of two dead Israeli soldiers, which was described as being “highly controversial”.

During a visit to Damascus that month, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad awarded Kantar the country’s highest medal.

“We have no idea who killed Samir Kuntar but whoever it was should be thanked by all of Israel”, said Avigdor Liberman, head of the opposition Yisrael Beitenu party and a member of parliament’s foreign affairs and defense committee.

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.