Israel freed a notorious Lebanese attacker and four others Wednesday after Hezbollah handed over two black coffins with the bodies of Israel soldiers, a dramatic prisoner swap that closes a painful chapter from the 2006 war in Lebanon.

The five — including Samir Kantar, who had been serving multiple life terms in Israel for a grisly 1979 attack — were brought home in International Committee for the Red Cross vehicles and received a red-carpet welcome at this coastal border town.

In Israel, family and friends outside the homes of the two captured Israeli soldiers burst into tears when TV images showed Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrillas taking the coffins out of a black van.

Though officials had suspected Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were dead, the sight of the coffins was the first confirmation of their fate.

The swap — mediated by a U.N.-appointed German official who shuttled between the sides for 18 months — reopened another searing moment from Israel’s past with the release of Samir Kantar and four other Lebanese prisoners.

Kantar was convicted in a 1979 nighttime attack that killed a 4-year-old girl, her father and a policeman. Although polls show Israelis solidly endorse the exchange, many see Kantar as the embodiment of evil.

In Lebanon, a hero’s welcome was prepared for Kantar, a Lebanese Druse who acted on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Front, a small faction of the PLO. The swap is likely to provide a significant boost to Hezbollah, which is trying to rebuild a reputation tarnished when it turned its guns on fellow Lebanese in May.

Winning freedom for Kantar was one of the reasons Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah cited at the time for going to war with Israel in 2006.

Wednesday’s exchange was a wrenching end to the war for Israel, which launched the fighting in response to the servicemen’s capture. The campaign to bring them home had become a national crusade.

Israeli forensic experts examined the remains for several hours, checking dental records among other things, before confirming the soldiers’ identities. Israeli generals then went to the families’ homes to deliver the news.

“The military bows its head and lowers its flags and warmly embraces the families, remembering its fighters who fell and were held by the enemy for two years,” Brig. Gen. Avi Benayahu, the chief military spokesman, said at the Rosh Hanikra border crossing.

The two soldiers, who were promoted posthumously, are to be buried on Thursday, he said.

The soldiers’ Hezbollah captors had withheld any information about them since they were taken, refusing to release pictures or allow the Red Cross to see them. It was not clear if Regev and Goldwasser were killed in the original raid or if they died in captivity. Evidence at the scene indicated both were seriously wounded.

Goldwasser’s newlywed wife, Karnit, had traveled the globe over the past two years, meeting with world leaders in a tireless campaign to bring the soldiers home. She and her father, Omri Avni, were at his parents’ house when the family was notified.

“After two difficult years, this was the most difficult moment,” he said. “Karnit vowed to bring Udi home. Now that this mission has been accomplished, a storm of emotions has erupted. ... We are in a difficult state.”