Hezbollah releases video of abduction of two Israeli soldiers

Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser

Hezbollah released a video on Friday documenting the 2006 abduction of Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, which led to the outbreak of the Second Lebanon War.

In the video, which was broadcast on the Beirut-based Al Mayadeen television, a group of Hezbollah operatives is seen penetrating the Israeli-Lebanese border fence and walking toward the road where Israeli soldiers are on patrol.

The Hezbollah operatives are then seen approaching a jeep, with Goldwasser and Regev presumably in it, after it was hit by an anti-tank missile. Hezbollah operatives are then seen opening the door of the jeep and removing the two soldiers, but then the frame freezes. Goldwasser and Regev themselves are not seen in the video.

The video was broadcast in a special program that marked six years since the Second Lebanon War on Al Mayadeen, which is a new news channel that began operating this month.

Ghassan bin Jiddo, the Lebanese reporter who broadcast the video and who is also the owner of the Al Mayadeen television channel, is known to be close to Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.

Jiddo said that Imad Mughniyeh personally oversaw the abduction and was present during the operation. Mughniyeh, a senior Hezbollah leader and one of the most wanted terrorists by the United States and Israel, was killed in 2008 by a car bomb in Syria.

Hezbollah's capture of Goldwasser and Regev on the northern border sparked the 34-day Second Lebanon War in 2006. Their bodies were exchanged in July 2008 in a prisoner swap for five Lebanese prisoners held by Israel.