GAZA, June 2 (Reuters) – Palestinian militants welcomed Jamil al-Aqra back to the fold along with hundreds of other prisoners freed by Israel on Thursday, carrying him off on their shoulders and firing into the air.

Israel freed 398 Palestinians in a gesture to moderate President Mahmoud Abbas, giving rise to emotional reunions with relatives and comrades near Israeli checkpoints in the occupied West Bank and Gaza where handovers took place.

Ten armed members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Abbas”s Fatah movement, mobbed Aqra as he got off a bus at Gaza”s Erez crossing with Israel after serving 2 1/2 years of a 4-year sentence for militant activity.

&#34Freedom is precious but our happiness will never be complete until all (8,000) of our brothers suffering in jails of the (Israeli) occupation are freed,&#34 al-Aqra, 38, said.

&#34If Israel really wants peace, they must free all of us, especially those in prison for more than 20 or 30 years,&#34 he added, echoing a collective grievance of Palestinians over jailed compatriots they see as heroes fighting occupation.

Cheering, whistling, clapping, singing and dancing erupted as buses full of prisoners, many flashing V-for-victory signs and waving red-black-and-green Palestinian flags out of their windows, pulled up to delivery points.

Families burst Palestinian police cordons to rushed up to the buses and thrust their hands through windows, and even climbed through, to touch loved ones not seen for years.

Some freed inmates knelt to pray, others kissed the ground.

Young Hamas and Brigades militants fired off rounds from AK-47 assault rifles waved their green and yellow flags.

A total of 400 prisoners were to have been freed but two opted to remain in jail, one to stay with a brother who was not part of the release, and the other to complete an academic course, an army spokeswoman said.

Freed inmate Mohammed Abu Adi, a Hamas man who served all but two months of a 7 1/2 year sentence, had an especially poignant reunion with family in Betunia, a West Bank village.

Relatives held up his son to his bus window to be kissed and Abu Adi told the boy: &#34I did not recognise you&#34 — because he was born shortly before his arrest.

For prisoner mother Umm Abed al-Najar, however, the release proved a day of disappointment rather than joy — her son Abdel-Aleem was freed in the West Bank town of Tulkarm rather than at Gaza”s Erez crossing where she”d gone to receive him.

&#34They let him go in Tulkarm to kill our joy,&#34 Umm Abed said tearfully. It was not clear why Abdel-Aleem was freed in the West Bank or how he would make it back to Gaza. Israel bans most Palestinian travel between the two territories.

Some prisoners brought models built in their cells including one of the al-Aqsa Mosque, part of a flashpoint Jerusalem shrine holy to Muslims and Jews. The mosque is an icon of Palestinian statehood dreams whose image appears in many Palestinian homes.

At the Palestinian Authority”s West Bank headquarters in Ramallah, freed prisoners laid a wreath on Yasser Arafat”s grave and read verses from the Koran.

Thursday”s release was first pledged by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at a Feb. 8 summit with Abbas.

A first batch of 500 prisoners went free on Feb. 21. But the promised release of 400 more was suspended after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed five Israelis in Tel Aviv on Feb. 25.