Sarkis, Ex-Lebanese President, Is Buried
BEIRUT — Lebanese President Amin Gemayel led mourners Saturday at the funeral of former President Elias Sarkis, who died in Paris on Thursday, state-owned radio said.
The requiem Mass in Christian East Beirut was attended by a Syrian delegation led by a government minister representing President Hafez Assad, the radio said.
Sarkis’ coffin, wrapped in the Lebanese flag, was taken after the Mass to his home town of Shbaniyeh in the Druze-controlled mountains for burial, it said.
Sarkis, a Maronite Christian, was 61. He was president from September, 1976, to September, 1982, a period that saw some of the most violent eruptions of the civil war and the Israeli invasion three months before he was succeeded by Gemayel.
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