Israel Matzav

Denials all around

The Prime Minister's Office, the IDF, and a spokesman for former Prime Minister Ehud K. Olmert, are all denying Lebanese claims that IDF soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev HY"D (May God avenge their blood) were killed in an Israeli air raid during the 2006 Second Lebanon War, which was sparked by their deaths.

The Prime Minister's Office and the IDF on Wednesday denied Lebanese statements that IDF soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were killed by an Israeli bombardment after they were captured by Hezbollah in 2006.

"These claims are baseless as the two soldiers were killed by Hezbollah during the attack on their IDF patrol on July 12, 2006," Prime Minister's Office spokesman Ofir Gendelman said in a Twitter post.

The IDF dismissed the statements as "blatant fabrications" and psychological warfare.

"The Hezbollah is responsible for the kidnapping of the IDF soldiers in 2006 and, as such, is responsible for the tragic results leading to their deaths," the IDF said in a statement.

A former aide to Ehud Olmert, prime minister at the time of the 2006 abduction and war, also responded to the claims deeming them as "utter nonsense."

"The forensic details we gathered at the site of the abductions made clear that Goldwasser and Regev were seriously wounded on the spot, at least one of them fatally," the aide said.

"This was confirmed by intelligence information that we subsequently gathered, and by pathological examinations upon recovery of the bodies, which Hezbollah had kept frozen. Their wounds corresponded to an ambush on the ground, not an aerial bombing."

A Lebanese minister had said on Wednesday that two IDF soldiers whose capture by Hezbollah in 2006 sparked the Second Lebanon War and whose bodies were returned to Israel two years later were killed by Israeli bombardment.

It's good that the IDF gathered forensics at the site of the abduction. There is very little they could have known from examining Goldwasser and Regev's bodies.

Labels: Ehud Goldwasser, Eldad Regev, Hezbullah, Second Lebanon War

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:52 PM