Anger, sorrow at funeral of Lebanese Forces official killed by Israeli strike
At a church in the mountains outside Beirut, Raymonda Mouawad raged as she buried her brother, killed by an Israeli strike in a war against Hezbollah that he had nothing to do with.
"We shouldn't be forced to bear the guilt of others' mistakes," she said, her voice filled with anger and sorrow.
"We're done with Israel and Hezbollah. That's all I want to say," she told AFP at the church, which was overflowing with hundreds of family members, friends and supporters.
Pierre Mouawad, a local official in the Lebanese Forces (LF) -- which is strongly opposed to Hezbollah -- was killed on Easter Sunday along with his wife Flavia and another woman.
The Israeli strike on a residential building in Ain Saadeh, east of Beirut, was the latest attack outside Hezbollah's traditional strongholds since the armed group drew Lebanon into the Middle East war on March 2 with rocket fire towards Israel in support of its backer Iran.
That attack sparked an Israeli invasion and air raids across Lebanon that have killed more than 1,500 people, according to authorities.
- Sectarian tensions -
The couple's coffins, draped in LF flags, arrived in Mouawad's hometown of Yahshoush in a packed procession to the deafening sound of automatic gunfire and fireworks as mourners threw rice and flower petals.
LF anthems blared in the church courtyard, where some men in military-style garb stood among the mourners.
Israel's strikes in majority-Christian and Sunni areas, including on hotels or apartments reportedly rented by people displaced by fighting, have stoked fear and division in a country where sectarian tensions have previously ended in bloodshed.
"We opened our homes to them... and in the end they came among us to harm us," said Raymonda, referring to people who have fled the majority-Shiite areas of Lebanon where Israeli strikes are most intense.
But Lebanon's army said Monday that its investigation showed there were "no new tenants" in the targeted building.
Investigations are ongoing "to uncover the circumstances of the Israeli attack," the army said, warning that speculation over "sensitive security matters... could lead to domestic tensions.".l
Israel's military has said it struck a "terrorist target" east of Beirut, and was reviewing the incident after "reports of casualties among Lebanese civilians."
President Joseph Aoun said in a statement on Tuesday that some were "exploiting fears of sectarian strife to serve their own interests," adding: "I will not allow strife."
LF leader Samir Geagea, who sent flowers to the funeral, said that "the Israelis were targeting a member of the Quds Force," the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' foreign operations arm, but he did not seem to have been killed.
- 'We don't want war' -
"Where is the state? There is no oversight, there's nothing, there are just lies," Raymonda said.
Nurse Fadia Mrad Atallah, 55, a friend of the couple's, said she was shocked by the news of their deaths.
"We've had enough bloodshed. We don't want war," she said.
"Whoever wants to wage war should go to Iran," she added.
Sam Hanna, 56, showed a series of missed calls from Pierre Mouawad on Sunday as he and his friend tried to arrange for a coffee meetup that would never happen.
"I told him, I can't, I have to pick my wife up from work, I'll come down and meet you at 7:00 pm. He told me he'd be waiting for me. I wish I had told him to come."
Scrolling through photos of them together, Hanna asked who his friend had died for.
"For Khamenei? No, his blood can't have been spilled for this," he said, referring to Iran's slain supreme leader.
Another friend, Marwan Khoury, 53, showed a video of his "last journey" with Mouawad -- accompanying his coffin inside the hearse.
"It wasn't Pierre's time," he said.
"Neither him nor anyone else should go like this."
Source: Agence France Presse
| Copyright © 2012 Naharnet.com. All Rights Reserved. | https://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/319394 |