Five Lebanese prisoners freed by Israel have received an official welcome at Beirut airport by the president and his government after a swap for two slain Israeli soldiers.

President Michel Suleiman, Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and members of major political factions, including Hezbollah's rivals, led a long line of politicians, as well as Muslim and Christian clerics in greeting them on the airport's tarmac on Wednesday in a show of unity and opposition to Israel.

VIDEO: Israel, Hezbollah in prisoner swap

The five were flown by two army helicopters from the southern Lebanese border town of Naqoura, where they were cheered by hundreds of spectators and received a red carpet welcome and a Hezbollah honour guard.

At the airport, the five stood in battle fatigues on a stand as the president addressed them as "the freed heroes".

"Your return is a new victory and the future with you will be a path in which we achieve the sovereignty of our land and the freedom of people," Suleiman said in his address. "I congratulate the resistance (Hezbollah) for this new achievement."

The five, including Samir Kantar, Lebanon's longest-held prisoner in Israel, then shook hands and kissed the dignitaries on their second stop before a massive Hezbollah welcome rally in south Beirut where tens of thousands of people gathered for the occasion.

Earlier on Wednesday, after being driven across the border by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the men changed into camouflage uniforms. An honour guard carrying Lebanese, Hezbollah and Palestinian flags escorted the men to a stage as a brass band played martial music and rows of uniformed fighters saluted at the coastal border town of Naqoura.

In his first comments after his release, Kantar told Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV in Naquora: "I salute today those who sacrificed in order to achieve this new victory."

Kantar greeted Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah militants "who raised our heads high up".

Kantar is regarded as a hero and an icon in Lebanon. In Israel, Kantar and the slayings he was convicted of are infamous. Israel traded him for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers ambushed and captured by Hezbollah fighters in a cross-border raid in 2006 that triggered a 34-day war.

Hezbollah officials as well as hundreds of people welcomed the men in Naqoura in southern Lebanon. Kantar wiped away tears as he stood in front of the cheering crowd. They later boarded Lebanese army helicopters for a flight to Beirut.

"We knew that you were waiting for the resistance and it reached you. You came back free and heroes," said Ibrahim Amin al-Sayed, head of Hezbollah's political bureau.

The families of the freed men greeted them at the airport tarmac after the official ceremony. One was seen carrying a young boy, apparently his son.

Al-Manar interrupted its live footage from Naqoura for few moments to show pictures of slain Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed in a car bomb in Damascus, Syria, in February, in a salute to their leader. Hezbollah dubbed the prisoner exchange "Operation Radwan" in reference to Mughniyeh's nom de guerre, Hajj Radwan.

Kantar was a member of the radical Palestine Liberation Front. He was captured while carrying out an attack in northern Israel in 1979. The four others are Hezbollah guerrillas who were captured by Israel during the 2006 Lebanon-Israel war.

Israel released the five men after receiving the bodies of the two Israeli soldiers earlier in the day. Israel also was turning over the bodies of 199 other militants from various Lebanese and Palestinian groups.

In addition to the two soldiers, Hezbollah handed to ICRC officials body parts belonging to Israeli soldiers killed during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.

In 1979, Kantar and three other gunmen made their way in a rubber dinghy from Lebanon to the sleepy Israeli coastal town of Nahariya, 8km south of the Lebanese border. There, in a hail of gunfire and exploding grenades, they killed a policeman who stumbled upon them, then burst into the apartment of Danny Haran, herding him and his 4-year-old daughter out of the house at gunpoint to the beach below, where they died.

The attack is seared in Israel's collective consciousness as being especially gruesome because an Israeli court found that Kantar shot Danny Haran in front of his child, then killed her by hitting her head with his rifle butt.

Haran's wife, Smadar, who had fled into a crawl space in the family apartment with her 2-year-old daughter, accidentally smothered the child with her hand while trying to stifle her cries.

Kantar denies killing the older child despite his conviction. He was 16 years old at the time.