Where is arafat buried

It was a stunning contrast to the Palestine Liberation Organisation leader's burial, when crowds pressed into the rubble of his headquarters, the Muqata, which had been flattened by Israeli tanks. The Muqata has since been rebuilt and transformed into a sprawling presidential palace of Jerusalem stone. Arafat's mausoleum is now a towering quad of limestone and glass, a reflecting pool, and an honour guard. But all of that was hidden behind large blue plastic sheets, hung to shield the exhumation from outsiders.

Palestinian officials justified the secretiveness as necessary to protect the dignity of Arafat's remains. But the opaque handling of the process reflected the doubts among some about where this could all lead. Many ordinary Palestinians have long believed Arafat was murdered by Israel, but they are divided over whether that warrants digging him up. It's disrespectful. It was very suspicious how he died, just like that under siege from the Israelis," she said. If Arafat was murdered, the guilty party is assumed by Palestinians to be the Israelis.

But if that is the case, it's unlikely they could have got to him without inside help. The speed of Arafat's death aged 75 after a short, unexplained illness fed the suspicions of foul play that took hold among Palestinians almost immediately after his funeral even though French officials determined that he died at a Paris military hospital from a stroke caused by a blood disorder.

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Principal Voices. Talk Asia. Mourners pray beside Arafat's flag-covered grave after his burial Friday. Will Yasser Arafat's death mark a turning point in the Middle East peace process? Story Tools. Iran poll to go to run-off. EU 'crisis' after summit failure. Ramallah, West Bank — AP - Yasser Arafat was laid to rest in a marble-and-stone tomb Friday after his flag-draped coffin was borne through a sea of emotional Palestinians who swarmed the helicopter that brought him from a state funeral in Egypt.

Police fired wildly into the air to keep back the surging crowd at the West Bank compound known as the Muqata, where Arafat spent his last years as a virtual prisoner.

After Arafat's body was lowered into the ground, Muslim clerics read Quranic verses and the late leader's bodyguards wept and embraced each other. Frantic mourners surged toward the tomb, trampling the olive tree saplings that were planted around the grave according to Islamic tradition.

One policeman knelt on the marble and kissed the stone. A black-and-white checkered keffiyeh was planted on a stick in the soil of the grave, arranged in the way Arafat habitually wore his traditional headdress. The Palestinians consider the gravesite temporary - a place for Arafat's body until they can honor his request to be buried in Jerusalem.

Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi said the pandemonium was a sign of love. They wanted to say goodbye without distance. An Egyptian helicopter carrying Arafat's coffin landed at the Muqata at midafternoon and was immediately rushed by tens of thousands of mourners. Hundreds of Palestinian security guards tried for 25 minutes to open the helicopter door to remove the coffin onto a jeep that had plowed through the crowd to clear a path.

Mahmoud Abbas, the new head of the PLO, and Omar Suleiman, Egypt's director of intelligence, tried to get out of the helicopter, but were kept back at first by the huge, chaotic crowd. As the coffin was carried toward the gravesite, police jumped on top of it, waved their arms and flashed the victory sign.

People chanted, "With our blood and our soul we will redeem you Yasser Arafat! Under the crush of screaming mourners, plans were hastily scrapped for a stately ceremony with Palestinian officials filing past his coffin. Some mourners were disappointed they could not properly pay their respects. I didn't get a glimpse of his coffin," said Hadeje Abu Sharif, 52, a diabetic who fainted during the frenzy.

If we had it, we would have a state. The failure of police to control the pandemonium augured poorly for Palestinian hopes to maintain order in the wake of Arafat's death. Hours earlier, mourners had burst through the gates of the Muqata and climbed over the walls of the compound, thwarting attempts by armed police to hold them back. Police scrambled to keep them off the landing pad.