(24 Jun 1998) Natural Sound

Israel began unearthing the bodies of some 40 Shiite Muslim guerrillas Wednesday which it plans to swap for the remains of a single Israeli soldier.

The exchange will be the largest prisoner exchange with Lebanon in two years.

Israel's Channel 2 TV said the swap was scheduled to take place Thursday at 8:00pm (17:00gmt).

A mass exhumation of bodies got underway in a military ceremony in northern Israel on Wednesday.

Mechanical diggers worked alongside soldiers to dig up the wooden coffins of some 40 Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas killed in combat against Israel.

Israel's army radio said members of a special rabbinical military unit went to the scene of the exhumations.

These coffins will be exchanged for the remains of a 21-year-old Israeli soldier who died in a raid last September in south Lebanon along with 11 other Israelis.

Sergeant 1st Class Itamar Ilya's body was the only one not recovered after the raid.

A coffin bearing his remains will arrive in Israel from Beirut, Lebanon on Thursday and then return to Lebanon with the Hezbollah dead.

Israel will also be returning the remains of the son of Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, killed in separate fighting last September.

A second stage of the swap, brokered by the International Committee of the Red Cross, is reported to be taking place Friday.

Israel would hand over an additional 16 Lebanese prisoners held in Israeli jails and 50 more would be freed from a prison in south Lebanon.

Such large-scale swaps have taken place previously, with the last one two years ago.

In July 1996, Israel freed 45 Hezbollah prisoners and returned the bodies of 123 guerrillas in exchange for the remains of two Israeli soldiers killed in Lebanon 10 years ago.

Hezbollah has been fighting to drive Israel and its allied militia out of a buffer zone Israel set up in 1985 in southern Lebanon to prevent cross-border raids.

Israel has said it wants to withdraw, but only if the security of its northern border can be guaranteed by Lebanon.

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