Hezbollah delivers remains of two Israeli soldiers

By Ayat Basma and Avida Landau

LEBANON/ISRAEL BORDER (Reuters) - Hezbollah handed the bodies of two Israeli soldiers to the Red Cross on Wednesday to be exchanged for Lebanese prisoners held by Israel in a deal viewed as a triumph by the Lebanese Shi'ite guerrilla group.

Many Israelis see it as a painful necessity, two years after the soldiers' capture sparked a 34-day war with Hezbollah that killed about 1,200 people in Lebanon and 159 Israelis.

Two black coffins were unloaded from a Hezbollah vehicle at a U.N. peacekeeping base on the Israel-Lebanon border after a Hezbollah official, Wafik Safa, disclosed for the first time that army reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were dead.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) took the coffins to Israel. The Israeli army later said it had identified the cadavers as those of its missing men, Israel radio said.

The report said Israeli generals were on the way to notify the Goldwasser and Regev families.

"The Israeli side will now hand over the great Arab mujahid (holy warrior) ... Samir Qantar and his companions to the ICRC," Safa said at the Naqoura border on the Mediterranean coast.

In a deal mediated by a U.N.-appointed German intelligence officer, Israel was to free Qantar and four other prisoners said by Hezbollah to be the last Lebanese captives in Israel.

If completed, the agreement will close a file that has motivated repeated Hezbollah attempts over the past quarter century to capture Israelis to use as bargaining counters.