Lebanese rally to mark Hariri's death
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-02-15 09:26

Popular Mourning

"We miss you," read large posters of Hariri. "They feared you, so they killed you," others said. "He lived Lebanon and died for its sake," a black banner read.

"I came here to say that the terrorist Syrian regime that kills will never escape punishment," Amal Yassin, a mother of three, told Reuters as she waved a red-and-white Lebanese flag.

Security officials estimated the crowd at 500,000. The rally's organisers and allied acting interior minister put the number at over 1 million, more than a quarter of Lebanon's 4 million people. All schools, shops, banks and businesses in the country were shut for the occasion.

However, Shi'ite Muslims, led by the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hizbollah group, largely stayed away.

Thousands of Lebanese soldiers and police were deployed in Beirut and its suburbs as people converged from across Lebanon on Martyrs' Square, the central area where Hariri is buried.

A violent protest earlier this month against cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, in which the Danish mission was burnt and a church vandalised, underlined the need for vigilance.

A U.N. inquiry has implicated senior Syrian security officials and their Lebanese allies in Hariri's killing.

Four pro-Syrian generals have been detained and charged with involvement, but no indictments have been issued.

One poster carried the pictures of the four and that of Lahoud above the caption: "Four down, one to go".

The killing of Hariri, a billionaire construction tycoon and prime minister for a total of 10 years between 1992 and 2004, galvanised world support for Lebanon and put pressure on Syria.

Since the Syrian pullout in April, Lebanon has suffered a series of bombings and the assassination of three anti-Syrian figures. Recurrent political crises and the resurfacing of sectarian tensions have raised fears of further instability.

Rice cited an "urgent need for Syria's full and complete cooperation" with the U.N. investigation. She hailed the legacy of Hariri and said he symbolised Lebanon's resilience after decades of civil war and turmoil and its determination to rebuild itself into a democratic and prosperous nation.