Israel to release more Palestinians

Israel's cabinet approves the release of five Palestinian prisoners, a final step in a prisoner exchange with Hizbollah.

Samir Kantar speaks to a large crowd in the village of Abay after he was released from prison last month.

JERUSALEM // Israel's cabinet today approved the release of five Palestinian prisoners, a final step in a UN-brokered prisoner exchange with the Lebanese Hizbollah militia, a top government official said. The mostly symbolic action will see the release of five Palestinians convicted on minor charges and who were already due for release soon. None were implicated in deadly attacks on Israelis, the official said.

The release of an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners was part of an agreement concluded last month that saw Israel trade five Lebanese prisoners and the remains of some 200 Lebanese and Palestinian fighters for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers whose capture sparked the 2006 Lebanon war. One of the Lebanese prisoners freed was Samir Kantar, Israel's longest-serving Arab prisoner, who was convicted of killing three civilians, including a four-year-old girl, in a grisly 1979 raid on northern Israel.

The prisoner exchange was celebrated across Lebanon as a victory for Hizbollah but deeply mourned in Israel, where the fate of the two soldiers was not known until their black coffins arrived at the border. *AFP