Final Rites Held For 8 Slain Guerrillas

By HOLGER JENSEN / Associated Press Writer

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BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — Firing machine guns in a final salute, Palestinian guerrillas buried eight comrades killed by Israeli commandos striking in the heart of this city and Sidon. About 40,000 persons turned out for Thursday's funeral rites and heard tirades barked over bullhorns against Israel and the United States. Palestinian guerrilla leaders have accused the U.S.

Central Intelligence Agency of participating in the attacks early Tuesday that killed three top commanders. In New York, the U.N. Security Council was summoned into special session to hear a complaint of the Lebanese government against Israel. The crowd jammed approaches to the Martyrs' Cemetery in a pine forest near a Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of the city.

Loudspeakers exhorted the slain men's families: “Mothers be happy! Your sons died like real men!” REPEAT CHANT They repeated a Moslem chant, “La ilaha illa Allah” — There is no God but Allah. Guerrillas carrying the coffins danced up to the freshly dug graves then retreated to prolong the burial, signifying that the deaths at the hands of the Israelis were noble.

Then men dressed in camouflage commando uniforms fired machine-gun bursts into the air and the dead were laid to rest. The crowd dispersed quietly. The burials followed emotional funerals in a mosque and a Christian church — one guerrilla was a Protestant — and a procession by chanting mourners, many of them heavily armed, through Beirut's streets.

The city was closed down; a general strike was in effect. Symbolic funeral processions also took place in Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad and Kuwait. CARRY COFFINS The crowd of mourners in Beirut carried the coffins, draped in the green, white, black and red-striped Palestinian flags, raised above their heads along a four-mile route from the center of the city to the cemetery.

Led by Palestinians, they chanted anti-Israeli, anti-U.S. and antigovernment slogans. “The deaths of the martyrs will strengthen our revolution and pave the way to victory over Israel!” they shouted. “The Israelis didn't come by boat ... They didn't come by air ... They came from the U.S. Embassy!” they yelled.

At one point, several youths tore down a huge portrait of the Lebanese premier, Saeb Salam, who resigned after the Israeli raid. They shouted, “Down with the cowards!” Few prominent Lebanese leaders took part in the procession. Guerrilla leader Yasir Arafat was notably absent.

Guerrillas in civilian clothes and the khaki uniforms and red berets fought to prevent the mourners from toppling the coffins. Many brandished pistols, machine guns and bayoneted rifles. The U.S. Embassy was heavily guarded. Guerrillas have threatened to strike at U.S. interests in Lebanon as reprisal for the Israeli raid.

ROADBLOCKS SET Police set up roadblocks around the U.S. Embassy late Thursday and were checking occupants of cars driving past on Beirut's main Seaside Avenue. An imam, or religious leader, at services in the Omari Mosque called for a holy war “to check Israeli treachery and reclaim Islamic dignity.” At the Protestant Evangelical church, the Rev.

Fuad Bahnan praised Kamal Nasser, spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization, as a “true Christian because he was against oppression, and Christianity is a revolution against oppression. Let the medal of martyr you earned be blessed.”

Nasser's coffin later was taken to the mosque where the procession began, preceded by a guerrilla band with instruments that included saxophones and bagpipes. Some of the mourners chanted a poem Nasser had written, called, “We are Returning to the Usurped Homeland.” Shops and schools were closed in Beirut and other Lebanese cities to mourn the slain Palestinians.

How this transcription was made

Single scan, six columns with a three-column AP wirephoto. Transcribed from 8–10x crops of each column. — No masthead or date line survives on this clipping — the scan begins at the headline. The paper is confirmed only by the photo credit “(Mobile Register AP Wirephoto)” at the end of the caption. Internal evidence fits Maria's label: the funeral is “Thursday,” the Israeli raid was “Tuesday,” and President Franjieh is “expected to announce Friday” — so the paper is a Friday, which April 13, 1973 was. Date recorded on Maria's authority plus that internal evidence, not on a masthead.

Cite this clipping

"Final Rites Held For 8 Slain Guerrillas," The Mobile Register, 13 April 1973. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1973-031. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1973-031