User:Jeremygbyrne/ILC

The 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict was sparked by an incident on the southern Lebanese border on 12 July 2006. Accounts differ about the exact nature of the incident.

The incident
At 9:05 AM local time (06:05 CET), on 12 July 2006, Hezbollah initiated a rocket and mortar attack on Israeli military positions and on the towns of Even Menachem and Mattat, injuring 11 soldiers and civilians. Afterwards, a ground contingent of Hezbollah militants attacked two Israeli armored Humvees on a routine patrol along the Israel-Lebanon border near the Israeli village of Zar’it with anti-tank rockets, capturing two Israeli soldiers, and killing eight.

According to the Lebanese police force and Hezbollah, the Israeli soldiers were attacked and captured on the Lebanese side of the border on 12 July during a mission to infiltrate the Lebanese town of Ayta al-Sha`b.

The IDF confirmed the capture of the two Israeli soldiers on 13 July and identified them as Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, both reservists who were on their last day of operational duty.

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Israel responded within 2 hours: "A force of tanks and armored personnel carriers was immediately sent into Lebanon in hot pursuit. It was during this pursuit, at about 11:00 A.M. … a Merkava tank drove over a powerful bomb, containing an estimated 200 to 300 kilograms of explosives, about 70 meters north of the border fence. The tank was almost completely destroyed, and all four crew members were killed instantly. Over the next several hours, IDF soldiers waged a fierce fight against Hezbollah gunmen … During the course of this battle, at about 3:00 P.M., another soldier was killed and two were lightly wounded."

Hezbollah released a statement saying 'Implementing our promise to free Arab prisoners in Israeli jails, our strugglers have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon'. Later on, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah declared that “No military operation will return them… The prisoners will not be returned except through one way: indirect negotiations and a trade of prisoners.”