Assassinated Hezbollah operative Samir Kuntar. Photo: Wikipedia.

An ex-IDF officer has confirmed that Israeli assassinated arch-terrorist Samir Kuntar in 2015, London-based Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat claimed on Sunday.

The paper, which is close to the Saudis and owned by a member of the Saudi royal family, claims that a former IDF official named Marco Morno stated that the operation that killed Kuntar in Syria was accomplished using two planes that fired four long-range missiles into a building in which Kuntar was located. The information on Kuntar’s whereabouts was supplied by “one of the leaders of the Syrian opposition factions.”

Kuntar was a Lebanese terrorist who served 30 years in Israeli prison for a brutal terrorist attack in which he personally murdered an Israeli man before smashing his four-year-old daughter’s skull with a rifle butt. He was released in exchange for the bodies of two IDF soldiers killed by Hezbollah in 2008.

Kuntar returned to Lebanon to a hero’s welcome and went back to terrorism as a prominent member of Hezbollah. He was killed in a rocket attack on a building in Jaramana near Damascus, Syria. It remained uncertain whether the operation was undertaken by Israel or the Syrian opposition.