BEIRUT: Five Lebanese freed from captivity in Israel were flown to a hero’s welcome here yesterday after Hezbollah returned the bodies of two Israeli soldiers seized in a cross-border raid in 2006.

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.

The International Committee of the Red Cross brought the men to the border town of Naqoura. After changing into military fatigues, they appeared on a red carpet flanked by a Hezbollah honor guard.

“This is a moment of divine victory,” Sayyed Ibrahim Amin Al-Sayyed, a senior Hezbollah leader, told cheering crowds.

Two Lebanese Army helicopters then flew the men 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.

Tens of thousands of flag-waving Hezbollah supporters gathered in Beirut ahead of a rally to celebrate the release of Qantar and four Hezbollah fighters captured in the 2006 war. Hezbollah earlier handed over two black coffins containing the Israeli soldiers.

The Israeli Army said forensic teams had identified the bodies as those of its missing men. Hezbollah had never disclosed whether they were alive or dead, but Israeli officials had said they were badly wounded at the time of their capture.

The release of the Lebanese prisoners, said by Hezbollah to be the last held in Israel, closes a file that has motivated repeated attempts by Hezbollah fighters over the past quarter of a century to capture Israelis to use as bargaining counters.

The fathers of the two Israeli soldiers spoke of their pain at watching the transfer of their sons’ coffins on television.

“It is not easy to see this, although there was not much surprise to it. But confronting this reality was difficult, yes,” Shlomo Goldwasser told Israel Radio.

Zvi Regev said on Army Radio: “It was a terrible thing to see, really terrible. I was always optimistic, and I hoped all the time that I would meet Eldad and hug him.”

Under the deal arranged by a UN-appointed German mediator, Israel also returned the bodies of eight Hezbollah fighters slain in the 2006 war and those of four Palestinians, including Dalal Mughrabi, a woman fighter who led a 1978 raid on Israel.

Hezbollah has dubbed the exchange “Operation Radwan,” in honor of “Hajj Radwan,” or Imad Moughniyah, the group’s military commander assassinated in Syria in February.

Yellow Hezbollah flags fluttered across south Lebanon and on the coastal highway from Naqoura to Beirut. “Liberation of the Captives: A New Dawn for Lebanon and Palestine,” a banner read.

Hamas said the prisoner swap deal strengthened its own hand in demanding freedom for hundreds of prisoners in exchange for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Israeli commentators sharply criticized the deal.

The Maariv daily newspaper said Israel had been humiliated, arguing that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah “will entrench his image as the only Arab leader who fought against Israel and defeated it.”

“No one except for him — neither the Lebanese government nor the Arab League, the UN or the Red Cross — none of these brought home a proud Lebanese citizen, who had been rotting in an Israeli prison for 29 years,” it said. The paper was referring to Qantar.