Palestinian Islamic Jihad group buries ex-leader in Damascus

DAMASCUS: Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad buried its former leader Ramadan Shalah in Syria Sunday, an AFP correspondent said, a day after he died in neighbouring Lebanon.

The 62-year-old died in a Beirut hospital before his body was transported to neighbouring Syria, a Palestinian source said. Shalah led Iran-backed Islamic Jihad from 1995 until 2018 when he was replaced by his deputy Ziad al-Nakhala.

At the time, Shalah — who the United States have listed a “terrorist” since 1995 — was believed to be in a coma after an unknown illness. Dozens of mourners, including his successor Nakhala, gathered around his coffin draped in the group´s banner in the Mazzeh neighbourhood of Damascus, after receiving special permission to gather despite the threat of novel coronavirus.

A funeral procession then headed to a cemetery in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of the capital, where the Palestinian source said Shalah had wanted to be buried if not in his birthplace of the Gaza Strip. An AFP photographer saw his coffin lowered into a grave. In a statement, Islamic Jihad in Gaza bid farewell to “the great leader whose history... we recall since the founding of the Jihad movement”. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas paid tribute to Shalah on Saturday night, saying the Palestinian people had “lost a great national figure”, Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.