Samir Kuntar

Samir Kuntar (Arabic: سمير القنطار, also transcribed Sameer, Kantar, Quntar, Qantar; 20 July 1962 – 19 December 2015) was a Lebanese Druze member of the Palestine Liberation Front. In 1979, he took part in the Nahariya attack in Israel, for which an Israeli court would convict him of murder and terrorism. Kantar denied the accusations and maintained his innocence. He was eventually released as part of the 2008 Israel–Hezbollah prisoner exchange.

Samir Kuntar was born to a Druze family in Lebanon and joined Palestinian militants in Lebanon at a young age. In 1979 at the age of 16, Kuntar and three other Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) militants snuck into Nahariya, Israel, by boat. Their goal was to capture Israelis and force Israel into a prisoner exchange, but the "raid went horribly wrong". In the end, two Israeli police officers and two Israeli civilians were dead, as were two of the PLF members. Israeli authorities argued based on eyewitness accounts and forensic evidence that Kuntar had murdered the two Israeli civilians, a father and his four year old daughter, alleging that Kuntar shot the father and bludgeoned the daughter to death with his rifle. Kuntar maintained they had been killed by Israeli forces as they shot at him and the PLF militants. Kuntar's involvement in the Nahariya attack and his conviction for child murder made him a widely reviled figure in Israel.

After Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah began to campaign for the release of all Lebanese citizens from Israel. Israel's refusal to release Kuntar (and other Lebanese citizens) was cited as the justification for the 2006 Hezbollah cross-border raid, which lead to the 2006 Lebanon War. After the war, Kuntar was released from prison as part of the 2008 Israel–Hezbollah prisoner exchange. His arrival in Lebanon was greeted by crowds of tens of thousands of people, as well as Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Sinora. He continued to be celebrated, receiving Syria's highest medal, and later being honored by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The US government designated him as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. According to some sources, Kuntar took part in the Syrian Civil War.

On 19 December 2015, Kuntar was killed by an explosion in the outskirts of Damascus. According to official Syrian sources, Kuntar was killed by "terrorist rocket attack". On 20 December 2015, Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi described the incident as a terrorist operation "plotted beforehand", commenting that Syrian authorities were carrying out an investigation to find out how the operation happened. Hezbollah claimed that the building was destroyed by an air-to-surface missile launched by Israeli Air Force jets. On 21 December, the Free Syrian Army released a video clip claiming responsibility for killing Kuntar.