Israel Kills Top Hezbollah Member in Syria Airstrike

BEIRUT – The Israeli air force killed Samir Qantar, an important member of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, considered by many Lebanese to be a “symbol of the anti-Israel resistance.”

The death of the 53-year-old Qantar, who was held in Israeli prisons for almost 30 years and in September had been placed on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorists, occurred on Saturday night and was announced Sunday in a communique by Hezbollah, which said that “aircraft of the Zionist enemy at 10:15 p.m. bombarded a residential building in ... Damascus and killed a fighter, the dean of the Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails, as well as several Syrian civilians.”

Qantar’s brother Basel also confirmed his death.

Al Manar television, run by Hezbollah, showed the ruins of the building hit in the Israeli airstrike by four missiles, which completely destroyed it.

A few hours after Qantar’s death became known, three rockets were fired from the southern part of Lebanon near Tyre into northern Israel, according to both countries’ militaries. So far, no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which injured nobody.

In response, Israeli army aircraft entered Lebanese airspace and carried out several very low flights and simulated attacks in the area from where the rockets were fired.

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.”

Qantar, a member of Lebanon’s Druze community and sentenced to life in prison in Israel in 1979 for participating in the murder of an Israeli police officer and two civilians, was held for almost 30 years – the longest of any Lebanese citizen in Israeli jails – until he was exchanged in a 2008 prisoner swap between Hezbollah and Israel.

Israeli military affairs experts are interpreting the airstrike as a message to Hezbollah and Tehran – which is allied with Hezbollah and the Syrian regime of Bashar Al-Assad – not to open a new armed front on the Golan Heights.