ISRAEL: Israeli soldier describes how two comrades were kidnapped by Hizbollah, sparking the crisis in Lebanon

A soldier who escaped the Hizbollah ambush on July 12 in which two Israeli soldiers were captured, spoke out from his hospital bed in Haifa yesterday (July 25, 2006). 22-year-old soldier Tommer Weinberg, from the Israeli town of Naharya, was part of the unit that was ambushed by Hizbollah in a cross-border raid on July 12. His companions Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were taken prisoner, and eight Israeli soldiers were killed. The ambush sparked a bombing campaign by Israel aimed at shutting down the militant organization, resulting in hundreds of deaths. Weinberg was injured in the arm and leg and is still recovering in Rambam Hospital, in Israel's northern town of Haifa. "It was a quiet day," he remembers. "Everything was normal. Then, we were caught in a Hezbollah ambush. They shot at us from all sides. Two of my friends, who were in the same truck as I was, were kidnapped by Hezbollah. Everyone who was in the second truck was killed." The day after the ambush, the Israeli army bombed the airport in the Lebanese capital Beirut and southern Lebanon, and Hizbollah fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel. To date, the war has killed at least 418 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians. At least 42 Israelis have also died. On Wednesday (July 26) foreign ministers, including U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, met in Rome to discuss how to end the conflict and bring humanitarian aid to Lebanon. UN-Secretary General Kofi Annan said he wanted the Rome meeting to urge the Security Council to call for an immediate ceasefire -- an idea so far resisted by Washington, which wants a "durable solution" first. Hizbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has rejected U.S. ceasefire conditions and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Olmert said he wanted the war to end as soon as possible, but only after Israel had achieved its goals, a parliamentary official said. Olmert declined to rule out an eventual prisoner exchange with Hizbollah, he said.

ITN Source | July 28, 2006

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