JERUSALEM, May 20 Yehoshua Zettler, a former Jewish underground leader who masterminded the 1948 assassination of UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte, died on Wednesday at the age of 92, Israeli media reported.

Zettler was Jerusalem operations chief for Lehi, also known as the Stern Gang, a radical group that fought against the British mandate over what was then Palestine.

The armed movement killed Bernadotte, a Swedish count, four months after he was named UN mediator in May 1948, when Israel declared independence and immediately found itself plunged into war with its Arab neighbours. Zettler admitted in 1993 that he ordered the killing.

Bernadotte's main mission was to implement the territorial division of Palestine.—AFP