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1979 Nahariya attack

Samir Kuntar being arrested

The 1979 Nahariya attack occurred on 22 April 1979 when Palestine Liberation Front members Abdel Majeed Asslan, Mhanna Salim al-Muayed, Ahmed al-Abras, and Samir Kuntar launched a cross-border attack from Lebanon and into Israel, killing 4 people.

The attackers, led by the sixteen-year-old Kuntar, left Tyre, Lebanon on a speedboat, landing on the beach at Nahariya and making their way inland with the intention of killing a policeman. They succeeded in luring out a policeman by using an intercom to shout in Arabic, and they killed the policeman after he fired warning shots. The group proceeded to take hostages, hoping to takke them back to Lebanon. Asslan was shot dead by South African Jew Charles Shapiro with a .22 Magnum revolver when Asslan shot up his apartment door, and the attackers took Danny Haran and his four-year-old daughter hostage. The Golani Brigade was sent to rescue the hostages, and the Palestinians' rubber boat was disabled by gunfire. An angry Kuntar shot Haran in the back and drowned him in the sea in front of his daughter, ensuring that he was dead; Kuntar then smashed the girl's skull against the rocks with the butt of his rifle; the young girl's two-year-old sister would also die during the attack, with Haran's wife accidentally suffocating her to death while trying to quiet her whimpering during the hostage-taking. The Golani Brigade killed al-Muayed on the beach and captured Abras and Kuntar, putting an end to the attack. al-Abras and Kuntar would be imprisoned until 1985 and 2008, respectively, when they were released in prisoner exchanges. Kuntar would be killed in an Israeli airstrike on Syria in 2015.

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