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Hezbollah leader says Israel should brace for retaliation over Qantar's death
Supporters of Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah gesture while they are listening to his speech via a screen during a commemoration service marking one week since the killing of Hezbollah militant leader Samir Qantar, in Beirut's southern suburbs, December 27, 2015. PHOTO BY REUTERS/Aziz Taher
27/12/2015
BEIRUT (Reuters) - The leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah group said on Sunday that Israel miscalculated by killing prominent militant Samir Qantar in Syria last week, saying that retaliation for his death was inevitable, whatever the consequences.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, speaking in a ceremony to mark a week since Qantar's death in a strike in a residential quarter of Damascus, said Israelis should brace themselves for a response either inside or outside Israel.
"The Israelis should be justifiably worried... They should be worried along the border, inside (Israel) and outside," he said.
"The response is coming no matter what ... We cannot forgive the shedding of our mujahideen blood by the Zionists ... anywhere in the world," he said. Israel has welcomed Qantar's death, but has not confirmed it carried out the air strike that killed him.
Qantar was jailed in Israel for his part in a 1979 raid in Israel that killed four people when he was a member of a Palestinian militant group. Qantar was repatriated to Lebanon in 2008 in a prisoner swap with Hezbollah, which he then joined.
Nasrallah for the first time acknowledged that Qantar had played a key role in creating a "popular resistance" in Syria against what he said were Israeli designs on the Syrian Golan Heights. Hezbollah is fighting on the side of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria's civil war.
Syrian state media said Qantar was involved in a major offensive earlier this year in Quneitra, near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Qantar's growing military role in the strategic area had unnerved Israel, Nasrallah said.
(Reporting by Laila Bassam; Writing by Suleiman al-Khalidi; Editing by Ros Russell)
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