NAJAF, Sept 2: Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis thronged the streets of Najaf on Tuesday to pay their last respects to Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al Hakim, whose death in car bombing threw the country into turmoil.

Ayatollah Baqer was laid to rest at around 2.15pm (1015 GMT) in the centre of the holy city of Najaf as two trucks and several shipping containers blocked off the sea of faithful who swarmed the area where the slain leader had wanted to build a mosque.

By the grave site, middle-aged men wept and Ayatollah Baqer’s brother Abdel Aziz, who sits on the 25-member interim Governing Council, paid their final respects to the fallen leader who had preached against violence since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

“Now that he is dead we are going to bury him and build a mosque there dedicated to him,” a spokesman for Ayatollah Baqer’s political party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), said earlier.

A sea of men thumped their chests in unison and wailed laments for Ayatollah Baqer.

Wave after wave of mourners marched the 15km from Kufah to Najaf in a blistering heat as they accompanied Ayatollah Baqer’s coffin, shrouded in an Iraqi flag and a green banner, as the three-day funeral procession approached its end.

People wept by the mausoleum of Hazrat Ali (RA) where Ayatollah Baqer was killed last Friday and a huge crater was gouged out in the ground from the force of the lethal blast.

The city was so tightly packed, the funeral organizers decided to bypass taking Ayatollah Baqer’s body inside the giant mosque compound.—APP