Bassam Kuntar denied that his brother Samir Kuntar (pictured above on the left with Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah) had been killed during today’s strike in Syria. PHOTO:YaLibnan.

The brother of infamous Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar was quick to deny Samir’s death on Wednesday after air strikes attributed to Israel were reported in Lebanon and Syria, Israeli news site NRG reported.

According to the reports, two Hezbollah operatives and three loyalists to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were killed in the strikes.

On Twitter, Bassem Kuntar claimed, “Samir is fine” and added his condolences to the “martyrs of the Syrian Arab resistance to the Israeli occupation in the Golan who were killed during the Israeli strike in the afternoon.”

#سمير_القنطار بخير. الرحمة لشهداء المقاومة العربية السورية ضد الاحتلال الاسرائيلي في الجولان الذي استشهدوا في الغارة الإسرائيلية ظهر اليوم

— Bassam Alkantar (@balkantar) July 29, 2015

Earlier in the day, Syrian media reported that Israeli warplanes had carried out an airstrike in the town of Khader. The reports claimed the strike was intended to aid rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate which is fighting to unseat Assad.

Israeli officials declined to comment on the incident.

According to various reports, Kuntar has been fighting with Assad loyalists operating in the Syrian Golan region.

Kuntar, a Lebanese Druze, is a former member of the Palestine Liberation Front who was charged with the murder of 31-year-old Danny Haran and his four-year-old daughter at a beach in northern Israel. Newsweek described the details of Kuntar’s murders as “so sickening they give pause even to some of Israel’s enemies.”

In July 2008, Israel released Kuntar in exchange for the bodies of Israeli soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser. He received a hero’s welcome in Lebanon from Hezbollah and Nasrallah, as well as other Lebanese politicians and public figures. During a visit to Syria later that year, Assad personally awarded Kuntar with the Syrian Order of Merit.