Baghdad - The body of the powerful Shiite leader Abdulaziz al-Hakim was buried on Saturday in Najaf City after arriving from Karbala amid tight security. The coffin of al-Hakim wrapped in green cloth with his black Turban placed on it was seen held by his supporters and surrounded by tens of thousands of mourners gathered to bid him a last farewell.
Mourners were carrying black banners and flags as well as pictures of al-Hakim. Some of them were seen beating their chests or crying.
Al-Hakim was buried alongside his brother Mohamed Baqer al-Hakim, who was killed in a car bomb in 2003 in Najaf.
The leader of Iraq's largest Shiite political party, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC,) died on Wednesday in hospital in Iran where he had been receiving treatment for lung cancer for the past four months.
Al-Hakim, a heavy smoker, was first diagnosed with lung cancer in May 2007 at a hospital in the US state of Texas.
On Thursday, the Iraqi government declared a three-day official mourning period for al-Hakim.
In Najaf, the sounds of helicopters searching the site of the procession were heard as thousands of Iraqi police were deployed along the southern Iraqi cities, en route to Najaf, to prevent terrorist attacks.
Before the burial, the coffin was brought to one of Shia Islam's holiest sites, the Shrine of al-Imam Ali, as part of the mourning procession.
Among participants in the procession was Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki who arrived in Baghdad earlier Saturday.
Hundreds of thousands of mourners had previously lined the streets of Baghdad and Karbala to take part in the procession.
Earlier on Saturday, a sea of mourners in Karbala surrounded the car carrying the remains of al-Hakim, trying to catch a glimpse of the coffin.
On Friday hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shiites as well as Iraqi and foreign dignitaries paid their respects to al-Hakim in Baghdad after his body was flown in from Iran.
A graduate of the renowned Hawza Shiite theological school in Najaf, al-Hakim had been the head of the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq since the assassination of his elder brother.
His family in particular suffered in Iraq's long political struggle. He lost six brothers to assassinations ordered by the late dictator Saddam Hussein. Having been imprisoned three times for insurgency activities under Saddam, al-Hakim went into exile in Iran in 1980.
The Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq, which was founded in the early 1980s with the help of Iran, is a powerful party that has long formed the backbone of the dominant Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), Iraq's ruling Shiite coalition of over 20 groups.
Meanwhile, Ammar al-Hakim, the son of the late leader, will step in as the council's head until a new chairman is elected, Aswat al-Iraq quoted leading SIIC member Hamid Mualla as saying.
"The council's policies stipulate that the chairman's deputy should take over during the absence of its head," Mualla said, adding that a meeting will be held soon to elect a new chairman.
Ammar is seen as one of the strongest candidates to succeed his father.
