Anti-Syrian protests mark Hariri's funeral
Men wept uncontrollably as the procession wound through Beirut streets plastered with posters of the Sunni Muslim billionaire slain in a suspected suicide car bombing Monday.
"Syria out, Syria out," the mourners shouted as people threw rice from balconies onto an ambulance carrying the body of a man who had joined opposition calls for Syrian troops to leave.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. French President Jacques Chirac, a personal friend of Hariri, was flying to Beirut to present condolences and "pay tribute to the person who always personified Lebanon's will for independence, freedom and democracy," his office said.
Several European and Arab ministers, along with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State William Burns and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, were among foreign dignitaries at the mosque for the burial.
The family had spurned government offers of a state funeral and made clear officials such as Syrian-backed President Emile Lahoud, Prime Minister Omar Karami and Interior Minister Suleiman Franjieh were not welcome to attend.
A security source said at least 120,000 people had joined the march, but other witnesses estimated hundreds of thousands.
Mosques blared prayers and church bells tolled across Beirut. The march, initially silent apart from the ambulance's siren, erupted in shouts of "Allahu Akbar (God is greatest)" and chants against Syria and its allies in Lebanon.
Syria's ambassador to France, Siba Nasser, reaffirmed Wednesday that her country had nothing to do with the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri and said Damascus did not fear an international inquiry as called for by Paris.
"We don't fear an international inquiry. Syria had nothing to do with it," she told French radio station Europe 1.
"If the Lebanese government accepts it (the inquiry), we will accept it," she said.
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