By Nadim Ladki
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's Hezbollah holds a mass funeralfor its assassinated commander Imad Moughniyah, one of theUnited States' most wanted men, in Beirut on Thursday amidcalls for revenge against its sworn enemy Israel.
The Jewish state put its embassies and other interestsabroad on high alert and boosted troop deployments on theLebanese border for fear of reprisal.
Hezbollah and its main backer Iran accused Israel ofkilling Moughniyah in a bomb blast in Syria on Tuesday. TheIsraeli government rejected the charge, though its Mossad spyservice had long sought to kill him.
Big crowds are expected in Beirut's Shi'ite Muslim southernsuburb to bid farewell to Moughniyah, a guerrilla seen as alegend by Hezbollah but on the U.S. most wanted list accused ofkilling hundreds in attacks on Israeli and Western targets.
Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki is expected toattend the funeral.
Reflecting deep divisions in Lebanon, Moughniyah's funeralwill take place shortly after a rally by the anti-Syrian rulingcoalition to mark the third anniversary of the killing offormer Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.
Tens of thousands, many waving red, white and greenLebanese flags, began gathering in pouring rain at Martyrs'Square in the centre of Beirut to listen to speeches byanti-Syrian leaders, including Hariri's son and political heir,Saad.
The anti-Syrian coalition is locked in a 15-month powerstruggle with the Hezbollah-led opposition that has leftLebanon without a president since November.
Hariri's assassination on February 14, 2005, plungedLebanon into its worst crisis since the 1975-90 civil war andled 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 oppositionhas spilled over into several clashes over the last year.
MAJOR BLOW
Moughniyah was the most senior member of Hezbollah to bekilled since its previous secretary-general, Abbas Mussawi,died in a 1992 Israeli helicopter ambush in southern Lebanon.
Moughniyah, 45, had long been on a list of foreignersIsrael wanted to kill or capture and had been top ofWashington's wanted list before al Qaeda's Osama bin Ladenemerged as an enemy of the United States.
He was implicated in the 1983 bombings of the U.S. embassyand U.S. Marine and French peacekeeping barracks in Beirut,which killed over 350 people, as well as the kidnapping ofWesterners in Lebanon in the 1980s.
Israel accuses Moughniyah of planning the 1994 bombing of aJewish centre in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and ofinvolvement in a 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in theArgentine capital that killed 28.
The United States indicted him for his role in planning andparticipating in the 1985 hijacking of a U.S. TWA airliner andthe killing of an American passenger. Washington welcomedMoughniyah's death.
Several Palestinian and Lebanese allies of Hezbollah calledon the group to avenge Moughniyah's death. Hezbollah has onlysaid its conflict with Israel was "a very long one".
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the group that has astrong political and military force in Lebanon, will addressthe crowd at the funeral via a video link.
Moughniyah's coffin, draped in a Hezbollah flag and flankedby four men in uniform, was laid in a hall where his family andthe group's leaders received condolences for a second day.
Moughniyah is thought to have been commander of IslamicJihad, a shadowy pro-Iranian group which emerged in Lebanon inthe early 1980s and was believed to be linked to Hezbollah.
The group claimed many kidnappings and bombings butdisappeared after the release of the last Western hostages inLebanon shortly after the end of the civil war in 1990.
(Additional reporting by Tom Perry in Beirut, Dan Williamsin Jerusalem)
