JERUSALEM, July 13: Israel said on Sunday it will release on Wednesday five Lebanese prisoners, including Samir Kantar jailed for a triple murder, in exchange for two soldiers captured by Hezbollah two years ago.

The Jewish state was also set to transfer to Lebanon the bodies of almost 200 Lebanese Hezbollah fighters and Palestinians under the prisoner swap which Israel and the Shia movement had approved in recent weeks.

“Samir Kantar and four other Lebanese prisoners — Khaled Zidan, Maher Kurani, Mohammed Sarur and Hussein Suleiman — will be taken on Wednesday from their centres of detention to a place to be decided by the Israeli army,” Prison Service spokesman Ian Domnitz said.

A statement by the prisons authority said the men would then be freed in keeping with the terms of a government decision on June 29 to go ahead with an exchange of prisoners with Hezbollah.

Under the deal, Hezbollah will hand Israel two reserve soldiers it had captured in a cross-border raid on July 12, 2006, sparking a devastating 34-day war that killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.Israel believes that the two servicemen, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, are dead.

But Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said earlier this month that “so far Hezbollah has not handed over any information about the fate of the two soldiers. Anything said in Israel is mere speculation.” As part of the UN-mediated deal, Hezbollah has also handed Israel a report it had drafted on the fate of Israeli airman Ron Arad who went missing in Lebanon in 1986, and whose fate remains unknown.

In its report, Hezbollah said Arab had died in captivity, but Israel remained sceptical over the validity of its findings.

“The report on Ron Arad, as it was transferred by Hezbollah, does not provide a clear answer over the fate of Ron Arad and does not solve the issue.

We are committed to continue working to find out his fate ,” Defence Minister Ehud Barak was quoted saying by his ministry.

“Despite that, as defence minister, a former chief of staff and commander, I have a moral duty to continue promoting the return home of Eldad Regev and Udi (Ehud) Goldwasser,” Barak said.

Hezbollah also transferred two previously unseen photographs of Arad, aired by Channel 10 TV, in one of which Arad is seen in pajamas against the backdrop of a curtain with Arabic writing. The photos are believed to date from 1987.

Israeli officials had made it clear that the deal would would go ahead only after Israel received intelligence on the air force navigator missing since a mission over south Lebanon during the country’s civil war.

Israel wanted the militia to explain how it reached that conclusion and why it could not locate Arad’s remains.

But although the deal still requires the final approval of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government on Tuesday, it is expected to be carried out as planned.

Hezbollah chief Nasrallah said early July that if the deal goes through, “Lebanon will be the first Arab state to close the file of its prisoners. There will be no more Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails.”—AFP