LEBANON’S Shiite movement Hezbollah on Monday vowed to respond to the killing in a suspected Israeli air strike near Damascus of one of its top militants, Samir Kantar.

    The movement’s chief, Hassan Nasrallah, said after the controversial militant’s funeral in Beirut that Hezbollah reserves “the right to respond to this assassination at the time and place of our choosing.

    “We in Hezbollah will exercise that right,” he said in a televised address.

    “For us, Israel is fully responsible for assassinating the martyr Samir Kantar. We have no doubt about this.”

    Whether Israeli jets violated Syrian airspace to carry out the operation or fired missiles from the occupied Golan was “a technicality,” Nasrallah said, adding Kantar “has always been a target” for Israel.

    Militants in the Lebanese capital manned checkpoints Monday as Kantar’s coffin, draped in the movement’s yellow-and-green flag, was carried to its burial place in the Ghobeiri area, a bastion of Hezbollah support.

    “The Israelis still haven’t learned that with all these assassination attempts on leaders they are committing a huge mistake,” senior Hezbollah official Hisham Safiedine said.

    A thick crowd chanted “Death to Israel! Death to America!” and waved the Palestinian, Lebanese and Hezbollah flags, as the coffin was carried to a mausoleum reserved for “martyrs.”

    Nasrallah made his address a day after rocket and artillery fire was traded over the border with Israel after Saturday’s killing of Kantar, who commanded operations for the group in Syria’s occupied Golan.

    Hezbollah played a key role in Kantar’s release after he had spent 30 years in Israeli jails, becoming known as the longest-serving Arab prisoner.

    Shortly after his release, he joined Hezbollah.

    The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said he became “head of the Syrian resistance for the liberation of the Golan,” a group launched two years ago by Hezbollah in the region, most of which Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war. (SD-Agencies)