Dec 20, 2015 Mr. Kuntar upon arriving in Lebanon in July 2008, after he and four others were released from an Israeli prison in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers killed in 2006. RAMALLAH, West Bank — A Hezbollah commander whom Israel reluctantly released in 2008 — nearly 30 years after he took part in a notorious terrorist attack — was killed in an airstrike in Syria, Hezbollah and his family said on Sunday. The commander, Samir Kuntar, was freed as part of an exchange that returned the bodies of two soldiers to Israel. He had served nearly three decades in prison for his role in the 1979 killings of a police officer, a civilian and his daughter in an Israeli coastal town near the Lebanese border. The civilian’s wife accidentally smothered their other daughter while trying to quiet her. Mr. Kuntar, in his early 50s, died when missiles slammed into a residential building in a crowded neighborhood of Damascus called Jaramana on Saturday night. A man who said he had seen the aftermath of the attack reported that a five-story building had been completely destroyed. Hezbollah, a Shiite militia and political movement, blamed Israel for the assault, but Israeli officials had no comment Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/21/world/middleeast/samir-kuntar-hezbollah-syria-israel.html?referer=
