Hezbollah says it has Israeli soldiers' body parts

By Yara Bayoumy

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, making a rare public appearance, said on Saturday his guerrilla group possessed body parts of Israeli soldiers left on southern Lebanon's battlefields during the war in 2006.

Addressing hundreds of thousands of cheering Shi'ite Muslim followers in southern Beirut during the annual Ashura religious rally, Nasrallah also said he would respond to Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty if they did not cease.

Hezbollah and Israel fought a 34-day war in 2006, triggered after the guerrilla group captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid in July 2006.

"Oh Zionists your army is lying to you ... your army has left the body parts of your soldiers in our villages and fields," the black-turbaned leader said in a live speech transmitted to the crowd on a huge screen.

"Our mujahideen used to fight these Zionists, killing them and collecting their body parts. I am not talking about regular body parts. I tell the Israelis, we have the heads of your soldiers, we have hands, we have legs."

Nearly 1,200 people in Lebanon, mainly civilians, and 157 Israelis, mostly soldiers, died during the 34-day war.

"There is even a near-complete body, a half or three-quarters of a body, from head, to chest to the torso," said Nasrallah, who earlier walked among the Ashura procession. He last appeared in May at the opening of a book fair in Beirut.

Nasrallah's unusually graphic comments appeared aimed at increasing pressure on the Israeli government to speed up U.N.-mediated negotiations for a prisoner swap deal in which the captured Israeli soldiers would be exchanged for Lebanese and other prisoners.