page_title: Israeli Combat Engineering Corps
section_title: The October 2000 Lebanon abduction
hierarchical_section_title: Israeli Combat Engineering Corps / History / The October 2000 Lebanon abduction
caption_attribution_description: Description: EWK-Gillois bridgelayer (IDF designation Timsach) in Yad la-Shiryon Museum, Israel. 2005. Source: Photo by me, User:Bukvoed.
context_page_description: The Israeli Combat Engineering Corps is the combat engineering forces of the Israel Defense Forces.
  The Combat Engineering Corps beret's color is silver and its symbol features a sword on a defensive tower with an explosion halo on the background. The Combat Engineering Corps mottos are "Always First" and the unofficial "The hard, we shall do today; the impossible, we shall do tomorrow".
  Its roles include mobility assurance, road breaching, defense and fortifications, counter-mobility of enemy forces, construction and destruction under fire, sabotage, explosives, bomb disposal, counter-weapons of mass destruction and special engineering missions.
  In addition to Combat Engineering Corps sappers, each infantry brigade has an engineering company trained with basic engineering and explosive ordnance disposal skills. Combat Engineering Corps sappers and heavy equipment operators are often attached to other units in order to help them breach through obstacles and handle explosive threats.
context_section_description: On 7 October 2000 three Israeli combat engineering soldiers were abducted by Hezbollah from the Shebaa Farms, in the Golan Heights.  The soldiers, Beni Avraham, Adi Avitan and Omar Sawaed, suffered fatal injuries during their abduction. Their bodies were retrieved in 2004 in a prisoner swap with Hezbollah.
  A series of accusations were made against the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) by press and partisan web sites for having cooperated with the abduction. Those accusations stem from a video, whose existence was originally denied by UN officials, recorded by Indian peacekeepers one day after the abduction. The video, which the UN agreed to provide to Israeli officials in June 2001 with civilian faces blurred, showed abandoned vehicles with fake UN license plates and uniforms, and Hezbollah supporters intercepting UN efforts to retrieve the vehicles. A UN investigation found no evidence to support accusations of peacekeepers involvement in the abduction. Although the bereaved families met with Kofi Annan, they refused to accept the UN version. On September 2004, the bereaved families announced their intention to sue the UN, Hezbollah, Iran, Syria and Lebanon for their parts in the abduction.
caption: "Timsach" (crocodile) Gillois amphibious tank-carrier
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