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Samir Qantar: Hezbollah leader 'killed in Damascus rocket strike'
Samir Qantar: Hezbollah leader 'killed in Damascus rocket strike'
(about 7 hours later)
Rockets fired from Lebanon hit southern Israel today, hours after an apparent Israeli strike in Syria killed Samir Kantar, a senior Hezbollah operative who spent three decades in prison for carrying out one of the most notorious terrorist attacks in Israeli history.
The senior Lebanese militant Samir Qantar has been killed in a rocket strike in Dasmascus, Syrian government loyalists and the Hezbollah group have said.
Lebanese officials told the Associated Press news agency that the rockets were fired from an area south of the Lebanese port city of Tyre. No injuries or damage were reported. Israeli government officials declined to confirm or deny the reports but did not conceal that they were satisfied with the death of Kantar. Ron Ben-Yishai, an Israeli military commentator, wrote on the Ynet news agency website that the Lebanese reports “more or less reflect the facts in the field”.
The militant, reviled in Israel for a notorious attack in 1979 killing four, was freed from prison in 2008 as part of a controversial prisoner swap with Hezbollah.
Israel held Kantar responsible for spearheading a Hezbollah effort to open up a new battle front against it from the Syrian-held area of the Golan Heights. Without commenting on whether Israel was behind the assassination, Shaul Shay, a former deputy director of Israel’s National Security Council, told The Independent: “He was in the [Israeli] sights so as to prevent future attacks. Israel works consistently to foil the development of a terrorist body in the Golan Heights.”
Qantar’s brother Bassam Kantar paid tribute to him on his Facebook page and declared his brother a martyr. He wrote: "With pride we mourn the martyrdom of the leader Samir Qantar and we are honoured to join families of martyrs.”
According to AP, Hezbollah said that Kantar – known in Lebanon as “the Dean of Lebanese Prisoners” – was killed along with eight others in the Damascus suburb of Jaramana on Saturday night. Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV said two Israeli warplanes that violated Syrian airspace fired four long-range missiles at a residential building. The Syrian state news agency, SANA, said Kantar was killed in a “terrorist and hostile” missile attack.
While the Lebanese Shia militant group have said Qantar was killed by an Israeli airstrike, Israel refused to confirm any details. Yoav Gallant, Israel’s housing minister, told Israel Radio: “I am not confirming or denying anything to do with this matter.”
Al Mayadeen, the Lebanese television station said that Farhan al-Shaalan, a senior Hezbollah commander, was also killed in the air raid, together with an aide to Kantar. According to Al-Manar TV, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah chief, is set to make a televised statement this evening, which is believed to be related to the death of Kantar.
But he added: "It is good that people like Samir Qantar will not be part of our world."
Kantar, a Druze Arab, was sentenced by Israel to three life terms for an attack he carried out as a 16-year-old in 1979, as a member of the Palestine Liberation Front.
Upon his release in 2008 Qantar was welcomed as a hero in Beirut and because of the length of time he spent in prison he became known in Lebanon as the “Dean of Lebanese Prisoners”. He is believed to have been a key figure in Hezbollah and in September the US State department designated him as a terrorist.
He killed a policeman and kidnapped and killed a man, Danny Haran, and his four-year-old daughter, after they crossed into the northern coastal town of Nahariya by sea from Lebanon.
The National Defence Forces (NDF) in Jaramana, which are part of a nationwide grouping of loyalist Syrian militias under the umbrella of the army, mourned Qantar and one of its commanders on its Facebook page.
Israel said Kantar bashed the little girl’s head with a rifle butt until she died, but he maintained she had been killed in crossfire. Haran’s wife, Smadar, accidentally smothered their two-year-old daughter as they hid in a crawl space during the attack. She told Israel’s Army Radio that Kantar’s killing was “historic justice”
Hundreds gathered in Kabul yesterday in protest at the film The Innocence of Muslims
Hundreds gathered in Kabul yesterday in protest at the film The Innocence of Muslims
REUTERS
REUTERS
Sheikh Sayyad Hassan Nasrallah appears in Beirut yesterday
Sheikh Sayyad Hassan Nasrallah appears in Beirut yesterday
REUTERS
REUTERS
Kantar was freed in July 2008 with four other Hezbollah guerrillas, in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers held by the Lebanese group. During a visit to Damascus that month, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad awarded Kantar the country’s highest medal.
The NDF said: “Two Israeli warplanes carried out the raid which targeted the building in Jaramana and struck the designated place with four long range missiles.
Mr Shay, a scholar at the Institute for Policy and Strategy Interdisciplinary Centre in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv, said that if Israel killed Kantar “the dominant consideration would have been the role he would play in the future and not what he did in the past”.
"His [Qantar’s] body has been sent to a Damascus hospital moments ago.”
Israel has been reported to have carried out several strategic strikes in Syria since the start of the civil war there in 2011, all believed to have hit Hezbollah weaponry or personnel, although it rarely claims the strikes.
Additional reporting by Reuters
Yesterday’s strike was the first assassination inside Syria attributed to Israel since Russia joined air operations in Syria on 30 September. Moshe Ya’alon, Israel’s Defence Minister, has said that Russia and Israel have worked out an open communication system “to prevent misunderstandings” between the two countries.
Last January, in another air strike widely attributed to Israel, Hezbollah senior operations officer Jihad Mughniyeh – also implicated in organising Hezbollah operations in the Golan – was killed on the Syrian side of the heights, along with several other Hezbollah members and a prominent Iranian general.
On 1 December Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu departed from his usual silence over Israeli moves in Syria, saying: “We are acting in Syria from time to time to prevent it from becoming a front against us.”
