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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.
Qantar’s brother Bassam Kantar paid tribute to him on his Facebook page without giving details about his death. Kantar said his brother was a martyr.
Qantar gets hero's welcome on return to Lebanon
“With pride we mourn the martyrdom of the leader Samir Qantar and we are honored to join families of martyrs,” Bassam Kantar wrote.
The militant Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah also confirmed his death, saying he was killed with eight others. Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV said two Israeli warplanes that violated Syrian airspace fired four long-range missiles at the residential building in Jaramana on Saturday night. It aired footage of what it said was the building, which appeared to be completely destroyed.
Syria’s state media, which did not mention Qantar, blamed “terrorist groups” for the attack and said it caused several casualties.
But government loyalists said the explosions were caused by an Israeli strike that was believed to have killed Qantar, who is reviled in Israel for a 1979 attack that killed four people.
An Israeli cabinet minister welcomed news of Qantar’s death but stopped short of confirming allegations that Israel was responsible.
“It is good that people like Samir Qantar will not be part of our world,” Construction and Housing Minister Yoav Gallant told Israel Radio.
Asked if Israel carried out the strike near Damascus, he said: “I am not confirming or denying anything to do with this matter.” Other Israeli officials, including military spokesmen, declined to comment.
Israel released Qantar, a Druze, in 2008 as part of a prisoner swap with Hezbollah and he is believed to have joined the group since.
He was welcomed as a hero in Beirut and he married a Lebanese Shia woman from a Hezbollah family. He became known in Lebanon “The Dean of Lebanese Prisoners” for being the longest-held prisoner in Israel.
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.
“His [Qantar] body has been sent to a Damascus hospital moments ago,” it said.
Qantar was imprisoned in 1979 in Israel and sentenced to three life terms after he and three other Lebanese infiltrated the country and staged an attack in the northern coastal town of Nahariya, killing a policeman and then kidnapping a man and his four-year-old daughter and killing them outside their home.
Israel says Qantar, who was 16 at the time, beat the girl to death with a rifle. He denies this, saying the girl was killed in the crossfire.
As the attack unfolded, the girl’s mother hid inside a crawl space inside their home and accidentally smothered their crying two-year-old daughter, fearing Qantar would find them.
Two of his co-conspirators were killed in a shootout with police. The third was also convicted and sent back to Lebanon in the 1980s as part of a prisoner swap.
After his release from Israel, Qantar kept a low profile. But it is believed he had become a commander in Hezbollah, which has sent hundreds of its members to fight alongside forces loyal to president Bashar al-Assad.
However, it was not immediately clear what role Qantar, born in 1962, played in the fighting in Syria.
Israel has struck Syria several times since the start of the war five years ago, mostly destroying weaponry such as missiles that Israeli officials said were destined for Hezbollah, Israel’s long-time foe in neighbouring Lebanon.
In January, an Israeli strike in Syria killed six members of Hezbollah, including a commander and the son of the group’s late military leader Imad Moughniyah in the province of Quneitra, near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Syrian government loyalists blamed Israel for the attack on Sunday.
“Two Israeli warplanes carried out the raid which targeted the building in Jaramana and struck the designated place with four long-range missiles,” the NDF in Jaramana Facebook page said.
It was not immediately possible to confirm the reports.
Jaramana is a bastion of government support and is the home of many of Syria’s Druze minority as well as Christians.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...mir-qantar-believed-killed-in-damascus-attack
