Tractors at Israeli cemetery for prisoner swap

updated 4:15 p.m. ET July 6, 2008

JERUSALEM - Israel TV on Sunday showed video of tractors working at a cemetery for dead Lebanese and Palestinian fighters, part of a prisoner swap between Israel and Hezbollah.

Israeli military officials said the exhumation of coffins would begin Monday, and identification of the bodies would continue for several days. The officials, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said the cemetery, in Israel's north, has been declared a closed military zone so that there will be no coverage of the process.

Israel approved the deal last week. In exchange for two Israeli soldiers captured two years ago by the Lebanese guerrillas, Israel is set to free Samir Qantar, a Lebanese who is serving multiple life terms for a grisly attack in 1979 in which a father, his two daughters and two policemen died. Also, Israel will free several other prisoners and return bodies of fighters.

Israel has declared that its two soldiers are dead. Their capture set off a 34-day war. The TV report said there is no firm timetable for carrying out the swap.

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