Samir Kuntar, one of five Lebanese prisoners released by Israel as part of an exchange deal with Hezbollah, has said he had no regrets over his imprisonment in 1979 for the murder of three Israelis.

Kuntar, a Lebanese Druze, returned to his home town of Abeih, southeast of the capital Beirut, where politicians from both sides of Lebanon's political divide greeted him.
  

As Kuntar received a hero's welcome in Lebanon on Thursday, Israel buried the remains of two soldiers returned as part of the deal with Hezbollah.

Thousands of people attended the funerals for Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, who were captured during a cross-border raid which sparked a 34-day conflict between Israel and the Lebanese movement.

The four men released with Kuntar were captured during that war in 2006.

'No regrets'

Kuntar was convicted and sentenced to five life terms for killing a police officer, a civilian and a four-year-old child in a raid in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya.

But on Thursday he told the crowds that came out to welcome to his home town: "I haven't for even one day regretted what I did.

"On the contrary I remain committed to my political convictions," Kuntar said.
  
"I feel enormous joy because I have returned to the ranks of the resistance and to my family."

Kuntar's family says that he did not commit any of the murders and that the victims were killed in crossfire during a shootout with Israeli security forces trying to apprehend Kuntar and other members of his group.

Walid Jumblatt, a leading member of the pro-government camp, and Talal Arslan, a Druze member of the opposition, as well as Mohamed Fneish, the labour minister, took part in the ceremonies in Abeih.

Israeli condemnation

Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, on Thursday labelled Kuntar an "animal" for the crimes he was convicted of carrying out.

"Woe betide the people who celebrate the release of a beastly man who bludgeoned the skull of a four-year-old toddler," he said in a statement.

But Mohamed al-Sayed Said from the Al-Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies in Cairo, said Olmert "should not take the moral high ground" with respect to what he sees as the "destructive effect" of the 2006 war.

"I don't think Olmert has any right to declare moral victory. While he may call Kuntar an animal, the war that he launched in 2006 resulted in the deaths of over 1,000 people," he told Al Jazeera.

"The whole world saw and continues to see how destructive it was."

Mostly of the Lebanese victims of the conflict were civilians, and about one-third of them were children. About 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers, were also killed.

Soldiers pledge
  
Al Jazeera's David Chater, reporting from Goldwasser's funeral in Nahariya, said that the Israeli government had reiterated its pledge to bring home missing or dead soldiers.

"Ehud Barak [Israel's defence minister] made a big promise that Israel would do anything to get any of their soldiers back again," he said.

Thousands of mourners attended the funerals of the two Israeli soldiers [AFP]