BEIRUT
Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah group has held a funeral procession for a leading member of Yemen's Shiite Houthi group who was killed in a bombing last month in Yemeni capital Sanaa.
A source close to Hezbollah told The Anadolu Agency that the body of Houthi leader Abdel-Malek al-Shami had been buried Monday evening in a Beirut cemetery near the grave of Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated in a 2008 bombing in Damascus.
Al-Shami was declared dead on Sunday in Iranian capital Tehran, where he had been receiving treatment for injuries sustained in a spate of suicide bombings that struck two Shiite mosques in Sanaa on March 20, killing over 140 worshippers.
Al-Shami's body, according to the source, was flown to Beirut from Tehran on Monday for burial.
The source said Hezbollah preferred not to invite the media to cover the funeral.
It had been al-Shami's wish to be buried near Mughniyeh.
Yemen's Shiite Houthi group has moved to consolidate its influence in Yemen following its takeover of capital Sanaa last September.
Since March 25, Saudi Arabia and several of its Gulf-Arab allies have been bombarding Houthi positions across Yemen.
Hezbollah and Iran have denounced the Saudi-led offensive against Yemen's Houthis.
Hezbollah, for its part, said the Saudi-led campaign "only serves the interests of the United States and Israel in the Middle East."
Saudi Arabia says the strikes are in response to calls by Gulf-backed Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi for military intervention to "save the [Yemeni] people from the Houthi militias."
The Houthis, meanwhile, decry the campaign as "Saudi-American aggression against the people of Yemen."
Some Gulf States accuse Shiite Iran of supporting the Houthi insurgency.
