Pflp Commander in Southern Lebanon Reportedly Hit by Israeli Commandos

Israel has declined to comment on reports from Lebanon that a top commander of George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was gunned down by Israeli commandos.

Reports out of Lebanon said Samir Suweidan, a Lebanese citizen and PFLP liaison officer with Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, was killed Friday afternoon by an Israeli force north of the border security zone in southern Lebanon.

According to initial reports, Suweidan was killed, together with his wife, their 11-year-old daughter and another man, when their private car was ambushed in a tobacco field near the family home in Yatar village, just beyond the northern border of the security zone.

Later reports from Beirut said that Suweidan himself had not been killed in the attack, but had been seriously wounded and hospitalized in Sidon.

The daily Ma’ariv newspaper quoted a senior Israeli military source as saying that Suweidan was “the sort of terrorist who has been in our sights for a long time, and he deserves to have been wiped out, whoever did it.”

Conflicting reports described the attack near Yatar as an infantry ambush assisted by helicopter, an assault by helicopter-borne commandos or rockets fired at Suweidan’s car from helicopters.

Other reports suggested the operation was intended as a kidnapping of Suweidan. According to this version, the attack team, having failed to capture him, called in helicopter gunships to destroy Suweidan’s car as he left his village.

PFLP and Hezbollah guerrillas are held responsible for a number of terrorist assaults against Israelis, including a series of Katyusha rocket attacks against the western Galilee last year, in which a 5-year-old girl was killed at Moshav Granot.