British experts working in eastern Lebanon have recovered a body believed to be that of journalist Alec Collett, killed at the height of the civil war, a security source said on Wednesday.
The Lebanese source told AFP on condition of anonymity that the team now awaited DNA test results on the body.
The nine-member British team, comprising military and intelligence specialists, had found two bodies while searching in eastern Bekaa for the remains of the 64-year-old reporter but had reburied one deeming it too young to be Collett, the source said.
The British diplomatic mission in Beirut confirmed to AFP that the search was under way but would not confirm that the team had found two bodies or that one was under DNA testing.
The search was conducted amid tight security at a site outside the town of Aita al-Fakhar, the security source said.
An AFP correspondent said journalists were not allowed near the site, which was a stronghold for armed Palestinian groups at the onset of the war.
Collett went missing in 1985 and was reported to have been killed a year later.
He was on assignment in refugee camps for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) when taken hostage near the Beirut airport.
The Abu Nidal Organisation (ANO), an offshoot of the Palestinian Fatah Movement, claimed responsibility for the abduction and killing, said to be in response to US air raids on Libya, a funder of the ANO.
In April 1986, a videotape showed the hanging of a hooded man said to be Collett, but the victim was never officially identified.
Palestinian Sabri al-Banna, or Abu Nidal, was found shot dead in Baghdad in 2002.
Source: AFP European Edition
