Hezbollah says senior leader killed in airstrike in Syria

A Hezbollah leader who spent three decades in an Israeli prison was killed Saturday in an airstrike in Syria, the Lebanese militant group announced Sunday.

In 2008, Samir Kuntar was released from prison in exchange for the bodies of three Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah in 2006; he was sentenced to three life sentences for his role in the murders of three Israelis — a police officer, a father, and his young daughter — in 1979. Hezbollah's al-Manar TV station in Lebanon said four Israeli missiles hit a residential building in Jaramana, outside of Damascus, killing Kuntar and at least eight others, The Washington Post reports. Officials in Israel have not confirmed or denied being behind the airstrike, but opposition leader Isaac Herzog tweeted that Kuntar "was a terrorist who refused to abandon the path of murder and terror. The region is safer without him."

Hezbollah, considered a terrorist organization by the United States, has been supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. On Sunday, hours after Hezbollah said it would seek revenge, three rockets were fired from southern Lebanon into northern Israel. There were no reports of any injuries or deaths, and the Israeli military later fired artillery at sites in southern Lebanon.

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