Naqura, LEBANON (AFP)
Israel and Lebanon on Monday carried out a prisoner swap, with the Jewish state handing over the bodies of two Hezbollah fighters in exchange for the remains of an Israeli man, a security source told AFP.
"The swap of the bodies of two Hezbollah fighters for the remains of an Israeli man has taken place," said the source, who did not wish to be identified.
The exchange happened at the Naqura crossing between Israel and Lebanon.
The source said officials were waiting for ambulances transporting the remains of the two Lebanese militants to leave the crossing and head to the Lebanese capital.
He said the two Hezbollah fighters were killed during the 34-day war in Lebanon last summer between the Shiite militant group and Israel.
The dead Israeli was an Ethiopian immigrant who drowned in Israel in 2005 and whose body was swept north to the Lebanese coast, where it was recovered by Hezbollah, the source said.
There were earlier reports that a Hezbollah militant seized by Israel during last year's war would also be released, but it was unclear by early evening whether he was included in the swap.
An army report released last December said that the two soldiers were wounded, one seriously and another moderately, in the cross-border attack that led to their capture.
Israel is also seeking the return of the bodies of five soldiers which have never been recovered since their deaths during Israel's 1982 onslaught in Lebanon.
On January 29, 2004, Israel freed nearly 450 prisoners, most of them Palestinians and Arabs, in exchange for an Israeli businessman, Elhanan Tannenbaum, and the bodies of three soldiers.
The exchange was brokered by German intelligence chief Ernst Uhrlau. As part of the swap, Israel agreed to free Lebanese prisoner Samir Kantar at a later date in return for information on the fate of Arad.
The 41-year-old Kantar received jail sentences totaling 542 years from an Israeli court in 1980 for infiltrating a northern seaside resort and killing a scientist and his four-year-old daughter as well as an Israeli policeman.
Hezbollah is also seeking the release of four Iranian diplomats believed to have been handed over to Israel by a Lebanese Christian militia after their capture in 1982.
It also wants the release of two other Lebanese, one of them a naturalized Israeli and the other whom Israel denies holding. |
