Captured troops may be dead, admit Israelis
Pastor Dale Morgan
Captured troops may be dead, admit Israelis*
By Tim Butcher in Jerusalem
Last Updated: 3:07am GMT 07/12/2006
Two Israeli soldiers, whose capture by Hizbollah sparked the summer war
in Lebanon, were so badly wounded when they were taken they might have
died, according to a secret Israeli military report made public yesterday.
.Members of the European Parliament and relatives of three kidnapped
Israeli soldiers address a joint news conference at the European
parliament in Brussels
MEPs and relatives of the kidnapped soldiers address a news conference
The report, confirmed as authentic by Israeli government sources, was
the first official word on the fate of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev
since they were captured on July 12.
It comes amidst growing speculation in the Israeli media that they are
dead, although the Israeli government still says publicly it believes
the pair are alive.
Hizbollah has defied prisoner protocol by flatly refusing to provide any
proof of life or even discuss the issue with intermediaries from the
International Committee of the Red Cross.
The report was compiled by medical and military experts just a week
after the cross-border ambush by Hizbollah near the Israeli village of
Zaarit, in which three Israeli soldiers were killed.
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They analysed the position in which the two soldiers were sitting in
their Humvee armoured jeep when it was hit by rocket propelled grenades
concluding that one of the two men must have been critically injured and
the other severely injured before being dragged across the border.
The implication was that unless they received hospital treatment
urgently, they would have died.
Relatives of the two men were shown the contents of the report months
ago but it remained secret until it was leaked to the Israeli media this
week.
It comes amidst a fresh surge in interest in the fate of the two men
following a number of public statements by Ehud Olmert, the Israeli
prime minister, about the pair.
When asked why he had ordered the ceasefire that ended the war on Aug
14, Mr Olmert said that after winning assurances Hizbollah would be
contained by the Lebanese army and United Nations peacekeepers, further
fighting was pointless.
"How could we continue the war when I did not even now if the two men
were still alive," Mr Olmert said.
This was among the comments seized on by the Israeli media as evidence
that the government believes the pair are dead.