ARABS-ISRAEL - Jan. 14 - Hizbollah Releases 2 Militiamen.

Hizbollah guerrillas free 2 pro-Israeli militiamen, a day after Israel and its allied militia released 27 Lebanese guerrilla suspects. But there is no letup in the fighting between the 2 sides. Lebanese security officials say Israeli warplanes raid suspected guerrilla hideouts in southern Lebanon, firing 2 rockets at Jabal Al Rafih in Iqlim Al Tuffah. (Iqlim Al Tuffah, or Apple Province, is a guerrilla stronghold facing an Israeli-occupied enclave in South Lebanon. The air-strike followed an attack by pro-Iranian Hizbollah guerrillas on an outpost manned by Israeli troops and their South Lebanon Army militia allies.) A Hizbollah official says guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb in an Israeli infantry unit near the Rihan outpost, inflicting several casualties. Lebanese security officials and the Israeli army can not immediately confirm the Hizbollah report. The 2 SLA men released by Hizbollah opt not to return to the Israeli-occupied zone where they were captured several months ago, preferring to stay in the government-controlled part of the country. The 2 SLA members, Assad Tormoss and Najm Habib, are handed over to officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross at a Hizbollah security office in south Beirut. They are greeted by relatives in the presence of journalists. Hizbollah's politburo chief, Mohammed Raad, tells reporters the 2 men would "return to their families to continue normal lives". He says the release would facilitate negotiations and more exchanges of prisoners. He says Hizbollah still holds SLA members, but did not give a figure. (Hizbollah is known to hold at least 2 more militiamen. Hizbollah is leading a guerrilla war to evict the Israelis and their militia from a zone in south Lebanon that Israel set up in 1985 as a buffer against cross-border attack. The militia holds about 120 people, suspected of being guerrillas or sympathisers, in its Khiam detention camp in the Israeli-occupied zone. Another 14 suspects are held in Israeli jails. The Israelis have demanded as part of any future swap information about the fate of missing airman Ron Arad, who was captured by guerrillas in southern Lebanon in 1986 after his fighter-bomber was shot down.) On Jan. 13, the militia released 25 people from Khiam. Israel also freed 2 Lebanese men who had been held in one of its prisons for more than 13 years. Only eight of the 27 former detainees returned to government-controlled territory. The others decided to stay with their families in the occupied zone.