BEIRUT: Lebanese paid their respects on Saturday to former prime minister Rafiq Hariri a decade after his assassination in a massive and shocking suicide bombing that destabilised the fragile country.

In downtown Beirut, political leaders and ordinary citizens gathered to lay flowers at Hariri’s grave, and several television stations carried rolling coverage of the day’s events.

Hariri’s son Saad, himself a former premier, returned from self-imposed exile for the occasion and addressed a memorial service.

He called for Lebanon’s Shia group Hezbollah, implicated by a UN-backed tribunal in his father’s killing, to withdraw its fighters from neighbouring Syria.

Speaking before a crowd of thousands on Beirut’s waterfront, Hariri called Hezbollah’s support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “madness”.

“We say (to Hezbollah): leave Syria. Stop spreading Syria’s fires in our country,” he said.

The conflict has spilled over into Lebanon, with bombings and border incursions by jihadist groups, as well as the influx of 1.1 million refugees.

“Assad has managed to break Syria over the head of the Syrian people,” Hariri added.

His father was killed by a car bomb blast on February 14, 2005 in Beirut’s seaside Ain al-Mreisse district.

Published in Dawn February 15th , 2015

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