The light catches a badge showing Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel while his mother Joyce Gemayel (right) comforts her daughter-in-law Patricia during his funeral in Beirut yesterday. - Reuters

BEIRUT (Reuters):

Tens of thousands of Lebanese paid tribute to assassinated Christian politician Pierre Gemayel yesterday, turning his funeral in central Beirut into a display of defiance towards Syria and its Hezbollah allies.

Raucous crowds carrying Lebanese flags and those of Christian factions, including Gemayel's Phalange Party, swarmed around Beirut's St. George Cathedral, where top Marionite cleric Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir conducted the rites.

Sunni Muslim, Druze and Christian leaders, standing together behind bullet-proof glass, called for solidarity in the struggle against the influence of Syria and its allies in Lebanon.

"National unity is stronger than their weapons, their crimes and their terrorism," said Saad al-Hariri, son of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri who was assassinated in 2005.

The leaders had accused Syria of killing the industry minister, the 34-year-old scion of one of Lebanon's most prominent Maronite clans. Damascus condemned the assassination.

"We will not rest until all the criminals are brought to justice," Gemayel's 64-year-old father, Amin, told mourners.

Gemayel was shot dead on Tuesday in the sixth killing of an anti-Syrian figure in less than two years in Lebanon.

The government says its Syrian-backed opponents, led by Shi'ite party Hezbollah, want to weaken it and to scupper an international tribunal under U.N. auspices that is being set up to try suspects in the suicide truck bombing that killed Hariri.

"Our suspicions are big that Syria is behind this (killing) to destroy national unity, to destroy us living together and to fuel sectarianism," Sunni mourner Ghada Hakim, 63, told Reuters.

Anger at Syria and resolve to support Lebanon's anti-Syrian majority coalition swept through the crowd. Inside the cathedral, family members wept and prayed over Gemayel's coffin.

"Whatever they do to remove young men, there will always be more young men to raise the flag," said Marwan Haj, 25. "Syria doesn't want us to be free and make our own decisions."