At Lebanon grave, Hezbollah chief hailed as martyr

By Laila Bassam

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim mourners are flocking to the grave of slain Hezbollah commander Imad Moughniyah, saying the man who had been wanted by the United States and Israel was now a symbol of defiance.

Moughniyah was assassinated by a car bomb on Feb. 12 in Damascus after more than two decades of being hunted down by a host of regional and international spy agencies.

He was Hezbollah's military commander at time of his death and the site where he and other prominent fighters are buried has been turned into a shrine visited by supporters.

Hezbollah, a powerful group backed by Syria and Iran, commemorates on Monday the 40th day since his death. Its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is expected to address thousands of followers at the event in Beirut's southern suburbs.

Moughniyah's tented gravesite lies a few kilometres from where the commemoration will take place. More than a hundred Hezbollah fighters are also buried there, including Nasrallah's son, Hadi, who died fighting Israel in 1997. The site has seen a sharp increase in visits since Moughniyah's death.

The grave, cut off part of a larger cemetery along southern Beirut's main highway, is adorned with pictures of dead Hezbollah fighters and Koranic verses blare from loudspeakers.

Moughniyah's grave lies at the centre with a framed picture of him set at the top surrounded by flowers.

Hezbollah and Iran have blamed Israel for killing Moughniyah, whose nom de guerre was Haj Radwan, and who was the commander of Hezbollah's powerful guerrilla army when it fought a 34-day war with Israel in 2006.