Coffin of slain politician arrives in hometown, damage, newspapers in Beirut

Описание: (22 Nov 2006)
Bikfaya
1. Wide of motorcade driving down street UPSOUND: sirens
2. Pull out from woman crying to mid of crowd
3. Mid of coffin being taken from car and raised high, crowd clapping
4. Wide of crowd with coffin
5. Women crying and throwing rice
6. Wide of crowd, man bearing photo of Pierre Gemayel
7. Coffin being carried through large crowd, being shaken and turned as crowd claps
Beirut
8. Various early morning shots of police at scene of shooting
9. Various of damaged vehicles being towed away
10. Early morning shot of scene of shooting
Bikfaya
11. Various of debris and damage from overnight rioting
Beirut
12. High shot of Beirut
13. Man standing at newspaper stand
14. Close-up of man looking at newspapers
15. Various of men buying a newspapers
16. Collection of Lebanese newspaper headlines
17. Newspaper headline reading: "Terrorism hits Lebanon again with the martyrdom of Pierre Gemayel."
18. Pan down newspaper headlines
19. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Vox pop, local resident:
"We should speed up the process of the international tribunal. Killing people this easily, this reflects negatively on Lebanon and the Lebanese. Killing a minister and there's no one to stop them. We demand to know the solution to all this.''
20. Various of man reading newspaper
STORYLINE:
Mourners gathered in the hometown of Pierre Gemayel in Bikfaya on Wednesday for the funeral of the Lebanese minister who was assassinated a day earlier.
Huge crowds gathered as Pierre Gemayel's body was returned to his hometown of Bikfaya to the northeast of Lebanon.
Mourners wept openly, throwing rice at the coffin and applauding as the coffin was raised above the heads of the pall bearers.
Gemayel, an anti-Syrian Cabinet minister and scion of Lebanon's most prominent Christian political family, who were the driving force of the right wing Phalangist party since its inception in the 1930s, through the civil war and beyond, was gunned on Tuesday in a suburb of Beirut, bringing the political tensions to a boil and threatening to plunge the country in sectarian strife amid a stand-off between the US-backed government and Syria's ally, Hezbollah.
Gemayel, a Maronite Christian, had just left a church and was travelling through his mainly Christian constituency of Jdeideh when a vehicle in front of him slammed to a stop, causing his car to ram into it, security officials said.
Three gunmen stepped out of the other vehicles and shot Gemayel at point-blank range with automatic weapons fitted with silencers, security officials said.
Lebanese troops guarded the scene of the shooting before the damaged vehicles were removed for investigation.
Lebanese daily newspapers were dominated by news of the killing, with one headline reading, "Terrorism hits Lebanon again with the martyrdom of Pierre Gemayel"
A local resident called for the international tribunal process to be sped up.
"Killing people this easily this reflects negatively on Lebanon and the Lebanese," he said.
The killing of the 34-year-old Gemayel sparked outrage among Christian supporters of Gemayel - whose father, former President Amin Gemayel, leads the Phalange Party - and sharply raised sectarian tensions in Lebanon.
But Lebanese troops quickly put an end to the trouble and set up checkpoints to prevent demonstrations in coming days.
A funeral was set for Thursday in downtown Beirut, with the anti-Syrian factions calling for mass participation.

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