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Hezbollah delivers remains of two Israeli soldiers

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-07-16 15:34

LEBANON/ISRAEL BORDER - Hezbollah handed over coffins said to contain the bodies of two captured Israeli soldiers to the Red Cross at the Israeli-Lebanese border on Wednesday to exchange for Lebanese prisoners held by Israel.

Hezbollah's al-Manar TV showed two black coffins being unloaded from a vehicle after Hezbollah security official Wafik Safa disclosed for the first time that Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were dead.

Lebanon's Hezbollah supporters work on posters of prisoners who are set to be released as part of a prisoner exchange with Israel on Wednesday, in Naqoura village near the United Nations headquarters in southern Lebanon July 15, 2008. [Agencies]

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) took charge of the coffins of the two army reservists and drove them across the border into Israel. The soldiers' capture in 2006 sparked a 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah.

The exchange was hailed as a triumph by the Lebanese guerrilla group and as a painful necessity by many Israelis.

"We are now handing over the two imprisoned Israeli soldiers, who were captured by the Islamic resistance on July 12, 2006 ... to the International Committee of the Red Cross," Safa said at the border.

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"The Israeli side will now hand over the great Arab mujahid (holy warrior) ... Samir Qantar and his companions to the ICRC."

In a deal mediated by a UN-appointed German intelligence officer, Israel was to free Qantar and four other prisoners.

Qantar had been serving a life prison term for the deaths of four Israelis, including a four-year-old girl and her father, in a 1979 Palestinian guerrilla group attack on an Israeli town.

The ICRC was conducting DNA tests on the two bodies at the border to confirm their identity.

Neighbors outside the Regev home wept at the news the two soldiers were dead. Fighting back tears, Shlomo Laniado, who served in their reserve unit, said on Israel's Channel Two television: "It increases the motivation to protect this country and it shows us who we are dealing with."

Israel will also hand over the bodies of 200 Arabs killed trying to infiltrate northern Israel. Hezbollah will return the remains of Israeli soldiers killed in south Lebanon.

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