Jerusalem  - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed sorrow Wednesday that two Israeli soldiers were handed back to Israel dead, and condemned the Lebanese for celebrating the return of a convicted killer as part of its prisoners swap with Israel.

"Woe to the nation, which at these moments is celebrating the release of a human animal, who crushed the skull of a four-year-old girl," he said in a statement issued by his office.

He was referring to Samir Kuntar, the highest-profile and longest- held Lebanese prisoner freed by Israel as part of the exchange with Hezbollah, under which Israel received the bodies of two soldiers, whose abduction in a July 2006 cross-border raid had sparked a month- long war with the Lebanese radical Shiite movement.

"The entire Israeli people today embrace the Regev and Goldwasser families in their mourning. The throat is constricted. The eye (sheds) tears and the heart goes out to the families who have struggled without tiring and didn't lose hope until the last moment," he said.

"This is a day of removing doubt, certainly about the fate of Eldad and Udi (Ehud), may their memory be blessed about, and about the moral strength and values of the Israelis nation.

"Out of that strength, we decided to bring home our sons, also at the painful price of freeing a despicable murderer," he said.

The concern about the fate of every one of our soldiers is the glue that ties us together as a society and it is this which allows us to survive in an environment surrounded by enemies and terrorist organizations," he added. (dpa)