THE 102 men, women and children killed in the shelling of a United Nations shelter were buried yesterday amid shouts of grief and anger from thousands of mourners and cries for vengeance against Israel.
Open coffins with the victims' bodies wrapped in white shrouds were handed high above the crowd and placed one by one in rows of concrete and brick niches in the ground beside the United Nations base where they were slaughtered on April 18th by Israeli artillery.
Amid shouts and tears a mourner removed a small white bundle containing the body of a child from its coffin and held it up for the crowd to see. The crowd shouted Death on Israel".
The coffins were draped in Lebanon's red and white flag each with a garland of roses. In the intense heat, firemen played water hoses over the crowd.
The Qana massacre was the bloodiest episode of Israel's blitz on Lebanon which killed some 200 people, mainly women and children.
Political and religious leaders of all parties and sects joined mourners at a funeral service in the ruins of the Roman hippodrome in the city of Tyre before the bodies were taken for burial at Qana, 12km away.
Lebanon's chief Shia Muslim cleric, Sheikh Mohammed Mehdi Shamseddine, in a funeral oration at Tyre called the massacre an Israeli crime". The Jews have made a holocaust of the Arabs and of Lebanon," he said.
The Lebanese Prime Minister, Mr Rafik al Hariri, and Shia Muslim parliamentary speaker, Mr Nabih Berri, led the mourners at the Tyre ceremony. The Syrian Minister for Presidential Affairs, Mr Wahib al Fadel, and Syrian military officers were among the crowd. Senior Christian clerics including a representative of the Maronite patriarch were also present.
Israel launched its air, land and sea bombardment of Lebanon, saying it was intended to crush Hizbullah guerrillas. Israel said it regretted the Qana massacre but blamed guerrillas who fired Katyushas 350-400 metres from the UN base.
The dead were buried together next to the headquarters of the Fijian contingent of Unifil (the UN Interim Force in Lebanon) where they died. The site is to be turned into a national monument and Mr Hariri has declared April 18th a national day of remembrance.
The victims were all civilians who had taken refuge in flimsy wooden buildings at the UN base during an Israeli bombardment. They were blown apart as at least five Israeli heavy artillery shells exploded among them.
. Guerrillas fired mortar bombs at military posts in Israel's occupation zone in south Lebanon yesterday for the first time since Israel ended its 17 day blitz, pro-Israeli security sources said.
The guerrillas mortared the Sojoud and al Ghizlan posts north of Maijayoun which are held by the South Lebanon Army (SLA), Israel's local militia ally, SLA sources said. The SLA returned fire but there were no reports of casualties.