TYRE, Lebanon (AP) — Four prisoners from Lebanon held in Israel were released and handed over to Lebanese authorities via the International Committee of the Red Cross Friday as part of a deal between the two countries. In return, Lebanon agreed to search for the bodies of Jewish Lebanese citizens who went missing during the country's civil war decades ago.
Dozens of Lebanese prisoners are believed to be held in Israeli detention centers, including
civilians as well as Hezbollah militants captured during fighting in southern Lebanon. A total of five detainees were released under the current deal, all civilians.
The first Lebanese prisoner, identified as Malek Ghazi, was released to the International Committee of the Red Cross and then to the Lebanese army on Thursday.
Those released Friday included two Lebanese citizens and two Syrians who had been captured in Lebanon, according to two Lebanese officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. Hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees and workers live in Lebanon. It was not clear if the released detainees would be sent back to Syria.
Associated Press journalists waiting at a checkpoint south of the city of Tyre in southern Lebanon saw a convoy of ICRC vehicles heading toward the Naqoura border crossing Friday morning and later return. The convoy then entered a Lebanese army barracks in Tyre.
Mahmoud Ayash, the brother of prisoner Hussein Ayash from the village of Harouf, who was waiting there, said his brother had been detained for about three months and had called from the border crossing in Naqoura to say that he had been released and was with the ICRC.
“I hope all our prisoners in Israeli prisons will be released and for all Lebanese citizens to be liberated,” he said.
Ahmed Atwe, also waiting at the checkpoint, said his relative, Mohammed Juheir, was a fisherman from the border town of Naqoura who was captured at sea by Israeli forces a year ago, when a ceasefire agreement was in place.
The ICRC said in a statement that the remaining prisoners had been transferred to it on Friday. The organization called for its teams to be granted access to the remaining prisoners, noting that it has not had access to detainees held in Israel since October 2023.
“Many families in Lebanon are still waiting for answers about the fate of loved ones who may be detained, deceased or otherwise unaccounted for," it said.
Among the missing are two men taken by Israeli troops from the village of Halta on Thursday — the same day Ghazi was released.
Issa Abdel-Al, a local official in the village, said Israeli forces raided the area early Thursday, interrogated residents, and seized a member of the municipal council and two other local men, farmers who kept livestock and bees. He said the three were civilians and that Hezbollah has no presence in the village. Halta has a mostly Sunni population, while Hezbollah has its support base in Shiite communities.
The Israeli military said the soldiers “apprehended three military operatives of the Lebanese Resistance Brigades organization, which operates on behalf of Hezbollah.”
The municipal council member was released Thursday night, but the other two remain missing, Abdel-Al said, as do four other residents of Halta taken in previous Israeli raids, including one in which a 15-year-old boy was killed.
“We have six captives they’ve taken from this village and we don’t know anything about their fate,” he said.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement Thursday that Israel agreed to release five Lebanese civilians detained by Israeli forces in southern Lebanon after Lebanon provided assistance in searching for the bodies of Lebanese Jewish leaders who were “abducted and murdered by terrorist organizations” in the 1980s, during Lebanon’s civil war.
Officials said the prisoner release came as a result of U.S. mediation and as a result of ongoing negotiations between Israel and Lebanon. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun thanked the “United States under the leadership of President Donald Trump” in a statement Friday.
Other thorny issues remain to be resolved. Lebanon and Israel, which do not have diplomatic relations, entered into rare direct negotiations after the outbreak of the latest war between Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah on March 2.
Hezbollah fired missiles over the border, two days after the U.S. and Iran attacked Iran. Israel launched aerial bombardment and a ground invasion of Lebanon and is now occupying a large swath of the south.
Lebanon and Israel in June signed a U.S.-mediated framework deal under which Israeli forces were to withdraw from areas they are occupying in southern Lebanon in exchange for disarmament of the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, but little progress has been made in implementation on the ground.
Hezbollah is not a party to the Lebanon-Israel talks and has said it will not give up its weapons in any area north of southern Lebanon’s Litani River. Israeli officials, meanwhile, have said they will not withdraw unless Hezbollah is disarmed throughout the country.
Another round of talks is expected to take place in Rome later this month.
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Sewell reported from Beirut. Associated Press writer Koral Saeed contributed from Herzliya, Israel.
