Hezbollah chief welcomes prisoners, Israel mourns

By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in a rare public appearance, welcomed five Lebanese freed from captivity in Israel on Wednesday after his guerrilla group returned the bodies of two captured Israeli soldiers.

Nasrallah, who moves in secret for security reasons, emerged briefly to embrace the ex-prisoners at a rally in Beirut and declared the exchange a victory for Hezbollah and Lebanon.

"This people, this nation and this country, which gave a clear image today, cannot be defeated," he told the crowd before leaving to deliver a speech by video link from a safe location.

A grim mood prevailed in Israel, where the prisoner swap was widely seen as a painful necessity two years after the capture of the two Israeli army reservists sparked a 34-day war in which about 1,200 people in Lebanon and 159 Israelis were killed.

Among the released captives was Samir Qantar, who had been Israel's longest-serving Lebanese prisoner and whom Israelis revile for his part in a 1979 Palestinian guerrilla attack.

The International Committee of the Red Cross brought the men to the border town of Naqoura. Wearing military fatigues, they marched down a red carpet flanked by a Hezbollah honor guard.

Two Lebanese army helicopters then flew them to Beirut, where President Michel Suleiman, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri kissed them at the airport.

"Your return is a new victory," Suleiman declared.

Israel retrieved the corpses of the two soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, only after agreeing to release Qantar, who had been serving a life term for the deaths of four Israelis, including a 4-year-old girl and her father.

"Woe betide the people who celebrate the release of a beastly man who bludgeoned the skull of a 4-year-old toddler," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in a statement before a private meeting to condole the families of the soldiers.

As fireworks lit the night sky, tens of thousands of people waving yellow Hezbollah flags gathered in Beirut for the rally to celebrate the release of Qantar and four Hezbollah fighters.

Crowds threw rice and mobbed the cars carrying the men to the rally in the southern suburbs, a stronghold of Hezbollah.

The ex-captives waved Hezbollah and Lebanese flags at the crowds before Nasrallah's surprise arrival sent them wild.

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The Shi'ite group, which is backed by Iran and Syria, earlier handed over the Israeli soldiers in two black coffins.