BEIRUT: The leader of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militant group, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, said Sunday more Israelis would be kidnapped if Tel Aviv continued to stall talks on exchanging prisoners with the Shia movement.

“We will give the mediations one last chance ... and then we will consider that all mediation efforts have reached a dead end and that the number of the Israeli prisoners are no longer enough to continue the mediation efforts to secure a swap,” Nasrallah told a rally in southern Lebanon commemorating the 14th anniversary of Israel’s capture of Hezbollah official Sheikh Abel Karim Obeid.

“We will not make any concessions ... but our fighters will resort to kidnapping new Israelis,” he warned.

Obeid was snatched by Israeli commandos from his home in Jebsheet, on July 28, 1989.

On October 2000, Hezbollah managed to snatch three Israeli soldiers from the disputed area of Shebaa in southern Lebanon. A week later the movement announced that an Israeli retired colonel Elhanan Tannebaum had also been seized by the group.

Nasrullah refused to confirm if Tannebaum was alive or dead. His family have said he was suffering from a serious illness. Hezbollah has refused to allow any neutral third party visit the captured men to verify that they were alive.—dpa