The remains of three missing Israel Defense Forces soldiers who disappeared when their warship was attacked by Hezbollah off the coast of Lebanon were found Sunday aboard the damaged vessel, military officials said.
The body of a fourth soldier hurt in the attack was identified Saturday as Staff Sergeant Tal Amgar, 21, from Ashdod.
He will be buried on Sunday at 4.00 P.M. in the military section of the Ashdod cemetery.
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The three soldiers have been named as Sergeant Yoni Hershkovitz, 21, from Haifa; Corporal Shai Atias, 19, from Rishon Letzion and First Staff Sergeant Dov Shteinshos, 37, from Carmiel.
Their remains will be undergo autopsies at the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir.
The incident occurred close to 8 P.M., west of Beirut, when the INS Spear, a Saar-5 Class destroyer, was on patrol as part of the naval blockade imposed on Lebanon since Wednesday.
The Saar-5 class is equipped with very advanced defensive systems. However, these were not in operation at the time of the attack, partly because of the number of IAF aircraft operating in the area. It was feared that if the system was in operation, it would mistakenly identify friendly aircraft as enemy targets and engage them.
The Navy has already issued new orders to its vessels operating off Lebanon.
The missile struck the vessel near its helicopter landing pad at the rear of the ship. A large explosion caused the landing pad to cave in and be engulfed in flames that threatened the aviation fuel storage below.
The blaze and the darkness made it difficult to discern the nature of the attack and the missing soldiers. Repeated count of the crew showed that four were missing. Only later was one body discovered in the rear of the ship.
Initial assessment held that the ship had been struck by an unmanned aerial vehicle loaded with explosives. However, later in the night it became clear that a missile had hit INS Spear.
The missile, is a C-802 radar-guided anti-shipping missile manufactured in Iran using Chinese technology. Its range is estimated to be about 110 km.
Apparently two such missiles were fired on Friday night, one of them hitting INS Spear and the other a Cambodian-flagged freighter, 60 km off shore. A dozen Egyptian sailors from the freighter were picked up by another commercial vessel after their ship sunk following the missile strike.
According to Brigadier General Noam Feig, head of the naval shipyards, the Saar-5 crew "fought the flames and managed to regain self-propulsion. For a while the ship had lost some of its ability to maneuver."
Close to midnight the ship made its way to port where its rudders were repaired.
IDF sources said Saturday that Iran transfered the C-802 missiles to Hezbollah, although intelligence officers noted that they were not sure whether Iranian advisers were involved in the launching of the missiles.
Brigadier Feig said that the Navy had no intelligence that such missiles were in the Hezbollah arsenal. "We were under the impression that we were operating beyond the range of missiles," he said.
In response to the attack, naval and air forces destroyed radar stations belonging to the Lebanese army. IDF sources said that the Lebanese army radar took part in the attack against INS Spear.
The head of operations at the General Staff, Major General Gadi Eisenkot, said Saturday that the IDF would attack Lebanese army positions only if they attacked IDF forces.
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