Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in a rare public appearance, welcomed five Lebanese freed from captivity in Israel today after his group returned the bodies of two captured Israeli soldiers.
Mr Nasrallah, whose movements are kept secret for security reasons, embraced the ex-prisoners at a rally in Beirut.
"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 secure 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 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 Hizbullah honour guard.
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," Mr 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 four-year-old girl and her father.
"Woe betide the people who celebrate the release of a beastly man who bludgeoned the skull of a four-year-old toddler," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in a statement before a private meeting with the families of the soldiers.
As fireworks lit the night sky, tens of thousands of people waving yellow Hizbullah flags gathered in Beirut for the rally to celebrate the release of Qantar and four Hizbullah fighters.
Crowds threw rice and mobbed the cars carrying the men to the rally in the southern suburbs, a stronghold of Hizbullah. The ex-captives waved Hizbullah and Lebanese flags at the crowds before Nasrallah's brief appearance
The Shia group, which is backed by Iran and Syria, earlier handed over the Israeli soldiers in two black coffins.
The Israeli army said forensic teams had identified the bodies as those of its missing men. Hizbullah 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, the last held in Israel, closes a file that has motivated repeated attempts by Hizbullah over the past quarter century to capture Israelis to use as bargaining counters.
Under the deal, mediated by a UN-appointed German intelligence officer, Israel also handed over the bodies of eight Hizbullah fighters killed in the 2006 war, and those of four Palestinians. The four were among the nearly 200 Arabs killed trying to attack Israel whose bodies are to be sent to Lebanon. Hizbullah also returned the remains of other Israeli soldiers killed in the south.
Israel is also to free scores of Palestinian prisoners at a later date as a gesture to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The European Union hailed the prisoner deal as a positive step by both sides that would contribute to regional stability.
Hizbullah has dubbed the exchange "Operation Radwan", in honor of "Hajj Radwan", or Imad Moughniyah, the group's military commander who was assassinated in Syria in February.
Hamas said the swap strengthened its own hand in demanding freedom for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.