Daniel Okev, who said he suffers flashbacks from his service in a reputed "hit squad", was convicted in a court in Beersheba, southern Israel, of killing Jeffrey Max Hunter and wounding Charlotte Gibb.

Jeffrey Hunter was killed and Charlotte Gibb injured in the shooting

The army reserve major had picked up the two British students when they were hitchhiking near the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat.

He shot them during a rest stop on a desert road.

Israel's Army Radio said Okev, in his late 40s, will be sentenced at a future date.

The radio said psychiatric tests had produced contradictory results on his mental state.

Okev had said he could not remember the shootings and suggested he might have a split personality.

An Israeli television documentary after the killing identified Okev as a veteran of the elite Rimon army patrol unit.

The documentary quoted a former member of the unit as saying it had served at times as a hit squad, gunning down wanted Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip in the early 1970s.

Okev told the documentary that mental images of his service in Rimon had remained with him.