The Lebanese group Hezbollah has handed over coffins, said to contain the bodies of two Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, to the Red Cross at the Israeli-Lebanese border. Hezbollah's ‘al-Manar’ television showed two black coffins being unloaded from a vehicle after Hezbollah security official Wafik Safa disclosed for the first time that Goldwasser and Regev were dead. 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 sparked a 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah.
In a deal mediated by a UN-appointed German intelligence officer, Israel was to free the jailed Lebanese terrorist Samir 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. Hezbollah cast the prisoner exchange as a victory for all Lebanese, with one official calling it "an official admission of defeat" by the Israeli side.
ICRC officials were conducting DNA tests on the bodies of the two Israeli soldiers to confirm their identity. The transfer began shortly before 10 a.m. Israel time at the Rosh Hanikra crossing in western Galilee, which the army had declared a closed military zone a day earlier. Neighbors outside the Regev home wept at the news that 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."
