The International Red Cross said on Saturday its officials had met three captured Hezbollah militants in Israel and urged Israel to declare the number of Lebanese guerrillas in its jails.

Andreas Wigger, head of the international committee's delegation in Lebanon, also asked Hezbollah's top official in southern Lebanon, Sheikh Nabil Kaouk, to allow his group access to the two Israel Defense Forces soldiers snatched by the guerrilla group, ICRC spokesman Hisham Hassan said.

Hezbollah's capture of the two soldiers in a July 12 cross-border raid triggered a 34-day war, which ended with a United Nations-brokered truce.

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"We have already visited three Hezbollah combatants currently in Israeli jails," Wigger told reporters after meeting Kaouk in the southern port city of Tyre. He said the organization would meet relatives of the captives to pass on verbal messages from them.

Hassan told reporters negotiations with Hezbollah and Israel for both sides to allow the Red Cross access to all prisoners were ongoing.

The IDF declined to comment on the number of Hezbollah prisoners and the Shi'ite Muslim group has not publicly released any information about the two soldiers.

Hezbollah's leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in an interview aired on Tuesday he expected a UN "mediator" to arrive in Lebanon next week to negotiate a deal to swap the two soldiers with Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails.

The preamble of UN Security Council resolution 1701 that ended the war calls for the unconditional release of the soldiers. It "encourages" settling the Lebanese prisoner issue.