Thousands of people attended a memorial service in Beirut on Friday for eight Hezbollah fighters killed in the 2006 war with Israel and whose bodies were returned to Lebanon two days earlier. Some 5,000 people gathered in a convention hall in the Hezbollah stronghold of the capital's southern suburbs for the memorial, which was attended by grieving relatives and supporters of the Shiite movement.
Eight coffins draped in yellow Hezbollah flags, decorated with floral wreaths and pictures of the deceased, were placed in the hall. "These martyrs have defeated the enemy... our enemy who was humiliated yesterday will remain so, by the grace of God," said the head of Hezbollah's executive council, Hashem Safieddine, in a speech.
"The brothers of these martyrs will confront the enemy if it ever thinks of making the mistake" of attacking Lebanon, he added in reference to Israel. "They will be buried in this blessed land after their return from the blessed land of Palestine."
The remains of the eight were handed over to Hezbollah on Wednesday as part of a swap with Israel that included the return of the remains of 199 fighters from various political factions, along with the release of five Lebanese men held prisoner in Israel.
In exchange, Hezbollah handed over the bodies of two Israeli soldiers captured in a cross-border raid on July 12, 2006, that sparked a devastating 34-day war. After the speech, a prayer was recited for the souls of the dead.
Relatives kissed and touched the coffins before they were carried through the southern suburbs by uniformed Hezbollah fighters as thousands of people followed. "Israel has fallen," read a sign in yellow and red. The eight bodies were to be handed over to their families for burials later Friday or Saturday in their native villages in southern Lebanon.
The other bodies handed over in the exchange were of members of secular Lebanese and Palstinian political parties. Hezbollah, however, dubs itself an "Islamic resistance movement." They were turned over to the respective organisations for burial, and some still require DNA testing for identification.
Officials from the Palestinian Fatah faction are still in the process of identifying them, a Fatah official told AFP. Among the remains of the returned Palestinian fighters was Dalal al-Moghrabi who was killed in a 1978 attack known in Israel as the "Coastal Road Massacre."