JERUSALEM (AFP) - 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 into two states, one Jewish and one Arab.

Zettler had also gained notoriety for leading Stern Gang forces in an April 1948 attack on the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin in which more than 120 civilians were killed in what is considered one of the worst massacres of the 1948 conflict.

He retired from military and political affairs at the end of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.