Thousands bid farewell to slaying victims, nation wary of sectarian violence

Описание: (27 Apr 2007) SHOTLIST
1. Wide of funeral procession
2. Mid of coffins being carried of Ziad Ghandour and Ziad Qabalan
3. Tilt down from fireworks in the sky to procession
4. Mid of coffins being carried in procession
5. Mid of Lebanese Army armoured personnel carrier (APC)
6. Wide of APC outside mosque
7. Coffins carried towards mosque
8. Ziad Qabalan's mother crying
9. Coffins entering mosque
10. Various of prayers
11. Walid Jumblatt, Druse political leader and head of Progressive Socialist Party, shaking hands with officials
12. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Walid Jumblatt, Druse political leader and head of Progressive Socialist Party:
"Let us all unite under the flag of the state, and protect the state and the Army. Let's await the conclusion of the investigations."
13. Wide of coffins carried by mourners into cemetery
14. Rear shot crowds around grave
STORYLINE
Several thousand people turned out in Beirut on Friday to bid farewell to a man and a 12-year-old boy whose murders shocked Lebanon and have caused rival political leaders to reach out to each other to stop the country from reverting to the sectarian bloodshed of its past.
Police said they were looking for at least three suspects in connection with the killing of Ziad Ghandour, 12, and his neighbour Ziad Qabalan, 25, whose bloated, bullet-riddled bodies were found on the side of a road near the southern port of Sidon late on Thursday - four days after they disappeared from the capital.
The government closed schools and universities on Friday, and put troops on alert and cancelled military leave.
Neighbours and friends, and throngs of mourners, carried the coffins of Ghandour and Qabalan from their homes in the Beirut district of Wata al-Mseitbeh, to a local mosque, and then onto a cemetery for burial.
As the procession passed, people detonated firecrackers, a traditional mourning gesture. One coffin was draped in a Lebanese flag, the other in a green and white blanket.
At the mosque, an estimated 5,000 people chanted "Allah Akbar," or God is Great, and "There is no god, but Allah and the martyr is Allah's beloved one."
Druse political leader Walid Jumblatt led the mourners at the mosque, accompanied by Cabinet ministers, lawmakers and Sunni and Shiite clergymen.
"Let us all unite under the flag of the state, and protect the state and the Army," Jumblatt told the congregation.
He also urged people to allow the judicial and investigative process to run its course.
Jumblatt even thanked his arch political rivals, the Shiite opposition party Hezbollah, for its condemnation of the killings.
Hezbollah denounced the killings as horrific.
The coffins were then carried to a nearby cemetery where they were interred.
Unlike other political funerals during the past two years, the speakers took pains to avoid apportioning blame or calling for revenge.
Jumblatt called Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah after the bodies were found, the country's leading newspaper An-Nahar reported.
There was no independent confirmation of the call, but all media reported that Jumblatt did speak to Nasrallah's ally, parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri.
The anti-Syrian Jumblatt and the pro-Syrian Hezbollah have been at loggerheads for months over a campaign by Nasrallah to bring down the pro-Western government of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora.
Qabalan and Ghandour disappeared on Monday after leaving their homes in West Beirut and going for a drive. They were both Sunni Muslims and members of Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party.
Media reports at the time suggested Shamas was killed by members of Jumblatt's party.

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