Hezbollah to hold mass funeral for slain commander

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's Hezbollah holds a mass funeral for its assassinated commander Imad Moughniyah, one of the United States' most wanted men, in Beirut on Thursday to calls of revenge against its sworn enemy Israel.

Big crowds are expected in Beirut's Shi'ite Muslim southern suburb to bid farewell to Moughniyah, a guerrilla seen as a legend by Hezbollah but on the U.S. most wanted list accused of killing hundreds in attacks on Israeli and Western targets.

Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, accused Israel of killing Moughniyah on Tuesday by planting a bomb in his car in Damascus. Israel denied any links to the attack while Washington welcomed his death.

Reflecting deep divisions in Lebanon, Moughniyah's funeral will take place a few hours after a rally by the anti-Syrian ruling coalition to mark the third anniversary of the killing of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in Beirut.

The coalition is locked in a bitter 15-month-old power struggle with the Hezbollah-led opposition. Hariri's assassination on February 14 2005 plunged Lebanon into its worst crisis since the 1975-90 civil war and led to the withdrawal of Syrian forces from the country.

Anti-Syrian politicians blame Damascus for Hariri's death. Syria denies any links.

The standoff between the ruling coalition and opposition has spilled over into several deadly clashes over the last year.

Moughniyah's killing is a major blow to Hezbollah, a group whose last confrontation with the Jewish state was the 34-day war of 2006.

Moughniyah, 45, had long been on a list of foreigners Israel wanted to kill or capture and had been top of Washington's wanted list before al Qaeda's Osama bin Laden emerged as an enemy of the United States.

A LIST OF ATTACKS

Moughniyah was implicated in the 1983 bombings of the U.S. embassy and U.S. Marine and French peacekeeping barracks in Beirut, which killed over 350 people, as well as the kidnapping of Westerners in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Israel accuses Moughniyah of planning the 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and of involvement in a 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in the Argentine capital that killed 28.

The United States indicted him for his role in planning and participating in the June 14, 1985, hijacking of a U.S. TWA airliner and the killing of an American passenger.

"The world is a better place without this man in it. He was a cold-blooded killer, a mass-murderer and a terrorist responsible for countless innocent lives lost," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

"One way or another he was brought to justice," he said.

Iran blamed Israel for his assassination while Syria described it as a "terrorist attack".

Several Palestinian and Lebanese allies of Hezbollah called on the group to avenge Moughniyah's death, but Hezbollah has only said that its conflict with Israel was "a very long one".

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the group that has a strong political and military force in Lebanon, will address the crowd at the funeral via a video link.

Moughniyah's coffin, draped in a Hezbollah flag and flanked by four men in military uniform, was on Wednesday laid in a hall where his family and leaders of the Shi'ite group received condolences.

Moughniyah is thought to have been commander of Islamic Jihad, a shadowy pro-Iranian group which emerged in Lebanon in the early 1980s and was believed to be linked to Hezbollah.

Islamic Jihad kidnapped several Western hostages, including Americans, in Beirut in the mid 1980s. The group killed some of its captives and exchanged others for U.S. weapons to Iran in what was later known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Among those killed was the CIA's station chief.

Moughniyah's brother was killed in a car bomb in Beirut in 1994. Reports at the time suggested Imad had been the target. Moughniyah had spent much of the 1990s in Iran.