Released prisoners enter Lebanon as swap under way

Samir Kuntar, the key militant released by Israel in Wednesday's prisoner swap, crossed into Lebanon to the cheers of his supporters and, according to Lebanese media, the widespread astonishment of the Lebanese.

Four Lebanese militants captured during the Hezbollah-Israel war two years ago also entered Lebanon after Israel released them.

Under the terms of the swap agreed to by Israel and Hezbollah, the release of Kuntar and the other four came after Israel identified two bodies it received from Hezbollah as those of two Israeli soldiers abducted in 2006, the Israel Defense Forces said.

Kuntar -- who had been detained before Hezbollah came into being -- was treated as a national hero and a political symbol by the Lebanese militant movement because he was the longest-held Lebanese prisoner in Israel.

But he was widely reviled in Israel, where David Baker, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, called the celebrations being staged and planned in Lebanon for the "child murderer" Kuntar "reprehensible and simply atrocious."

A member of the Palestine Liberation Front, Kuntar led a group of four men who entered Israel from Lebanon by boat in 1979. They killed a police officer who came across them. Then they took a 28-year-old man and his 4-year-old daughter hostage.

Kuntar shot the father dead at close range in front of his daughter and tossed his body in the sea. He then smashed the girl's head, killing her, too. In addition, a 2-year-old girl suffocated as her mother tried to stop her from crying while they hid during the violence.

Kuntar was sentenced to 542 years in prison.