Kuntar killed by smart bombs fired from Israel, Syrian paper claims
Assad mouthpiece says rescue services recovered fragments of four IDF missiles used in Saturday night’s airstrike
Judah Ari Gross is The Times of Israel's religions and Diaspora affairs correspondent.
An Assad regime mouthpiece on Monday reported the details of the alleged Israeli flight path and smart bombs used in the Saturday night airstrike that killed notorious Hezbollah terrorist Samir Kuntar.
According to Syrian newspaper As-Safir, Israeli Air Force fighter jets fired their payload from within Israeli airspace, sending the bombs some 90 kilometers (56 miles) to Damascus, where they struck Kuntar’s sixth-floor apartment.
Syrian aerial defense systems identified the Israeli planes, As-Safir said, but since the planes were operating within Israeli territory, the Syrian army did not react to them.
Israel, for its part, has not taken credit for the strike, though government officials have happily acknowledged news of Kuntar’s death.
According to the Syrian report, two Israeli F-15 airplanes flew from the Hatzerim IAF base near Beersheba to the Sea of Galilee, where they fired four SPICE-2000 missiles. After the attack, Syrian search and rescue teams recovered pieces of the missiles, which were created by Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, the newspaper reported.
The attack not only revealed Israel’s technological capabilities, but also the impressive abilities of the Jewish state’s intelligence services, the article noted, citing the fact that Kuntar had only arrived at the Damascus apartment a few hours before the alleged Israeli airstrike.
Kuntar was killed along with eight others in the airstrike on a residential building in Jaramana, on the outskirts of the Syrian capital of Damascus. Approximately 20 other people were rescued from the wreckage.
Kuntar spent almost 30 years in an Israeli prison for his part in the brutal 1979 murders of a Nahariya family. The Lebanese Druze terrorist murdered four-year-old Einat Haran in the attack, bashing her head with the butt of his rifle. Three others, including her father, Danny, were also murdered in the attack. Kuntar was 16 at the time, and a member of the Palestine Liberation Front.
Thousands of people gathered Monday in a Hezbollah stronghold south of the Lebanese capital of Beirut for the funeral of high-profile terrorist Samir Kuntar, who, the Shiite group claims, was killed by an Israeli airstrike near the Syrian capital overnight Saturday.
The Shiite terror group, which fought Israel in a month-long war in 2006, has pledged to avenge his killing.
The Times of Israel Community.