Body of sailor missing after strike on warship recovered
By YAAKOV KATZ, AP AND JPOST STAFF

Bodies of two of the four missing Israeli soldiers on a warship that was attacked by Hizbullah off the coast of Lebanon were found Saturday aboard the damaged vessel, military officials said.

Two of the bodies of the misssing soldiers were recovered, but the IDF spokesman would confirm only that one body was found on the ship, and said the other three soldiers were missing.

The warship was returning to the Israeli port of Haifa Saturday when the remains of the two soldiers were found in the wrecked part of the ship, the military officials said on condition of anonymity since they were not authorized to speak to the press.

The body of one of the recovered sailors was identified as Third Petty Officer Tal Amgar, 21, from Ashdod.

The names of the other sailors were also released for publication: L.-Rtg. Shai Atias, 19, from Rishon Lezion; Fourth Petty Officer Yaniv Hershkovitz, 21, from Haifa; and First Petty Officer Dov Shtrenshous, 37, from Karmiel.

A Hizbullah strike on the IDF warship off the Lebanese coast damaged the ship severely, and the IDF confirmed early Saturday to The Jerusalem Post that four sailors had gone missing from the damaged warship.

An IDF investigation into the attack showed that Hizbullah had fired an Iranian-made missile at the vessel from the shores of Lebanon, said Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan.

A senior IDF intelligence official says that Iran has approximately 100 soldiers in Lebanon and that they helped Hizbullah hit an Israel Navy ship with an anti-ship missile.
It was first thought that an explosives-laden UAV caused the blast.

"We can confirm that it was hit by an Iranian-made missile launched by Hizbullah. We see this as very profound fingerprint of Iranian involvement in Hizbullah," Nehushtan said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Another Hizbullah missile also hit and sank a nearby civilian merchant ship at around the same time, Nehushtan said. He said that ship apparently was Egyptian, but he had no other information about it.

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