Israel mulls swapping killer for soldiers

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has concluded that Israel should swap the perpetrator of a particularly grisly terror attack for two Israeli soldiers held in Lebanon for the past two years, a senior government official confirmed yesterday.

Samir Kantar is serving multiple life sentences for killing four Israelis in a 1979 infiltration of an apartment building in northern Israel. Among the dead were a 28-year-old man and his 4-year-old daughter, whose head Kantar repeatedly smashed against a rock before crushing her skull with a rifle butt.

Her mother, who was hiding in a crawl space, accidentally smothered her other daughter while trying to silence the 2-year-old's cries.