[See photo caption below]
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - The body of Faisal al-Husseini, the top Palestinian official for Jerusalem, arrived in the West Bank from Amman on Friday escorted by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat for a hero's funeral in Jerusalem.

Hundreds of civilians and dignitaries gathered to pay their respects to Husseini, who was 60, as red-bereted Palestinian security forces removed his coffin, draped with a Palestinian flag and colorful flowers, from the Jordanian helicopter.

Arafat reached up to touch the coffin, saluting the man who was by his side in the decades of struggle for an independent Palestinian state with Arab East Jerusalem as its capital.

Husseini died suddenly on Thursday from a heart attack while visiting Kuwait. Accusations by Arafat on Thursday that Israeli teargas contributed to the heart attack seemed likely to inflame passions amid a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.

Looking sad as he accompanied Husseini's coffin on Friday, Arafat told reporters that Palestinians had lost a leader who had been a member of his mainstream Fatah movement and on the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (news - web sites).

``He used to carry the burden of the Jerusalem file and we cannot forget he is from Jerusalem and he was continuing on the path of his father,'' Arafat said of Husseini, whose father died in a battle for the holy city in the 1948 Middle East war.

``He has gone with the martyrs,'' said Arafat, whose mother was a member of the Husseini family.

Perched on rooftops and balconies, people watched the honor guard -- reserved for martyrs and military men -- at Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah before the coffin was driven through the West Bank city's streets.

``With our lives and souls we'll sacrifice the martyr,'' thousands of mourners chanted as the coffin was driven through the crowd in a military jeep.

Mourning songs were played as relatives and personal bodyguards wept. Tears streamed down Arafat's face as the coffin passed by him.

A ``NATIONAL DISASTER''

Jibril al-Rajoub, Palestinian security chief in the West Bank, told Reuters Husseini's death was a ``national disaster.''

``The Palestinian people lost the most important figure who embodied the ambitions and identification of the Palestinian people with Palestine and with Jerusalem,'' Rajoub told Reuters.

Dignitaries and civilians were to accompany Husseini's body from Ramallah to the Muslim holy site of al-Haram al-Sharif in Arab East Jerusalem, where he is to be laid to rest alongside his father and grandfather.

Husseini, a soft-spoken symbol of the struggle to make East Jerusalem the capital of a future state, was to be one of few people to be buried on al-Haram al-Sharif, a shrine holy to Jews as well, who know it as Temple Mount.

Husseini's father and grandfather are buried in the compound, where the Palestinian uprising erupted in September. The site is one of the most sensitive issues in the 53-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The great-grandfather and grandfather of the late Jordanian King Hussein are also buried in the compound.

``This is unique. It's very special for a person to be buried on the compound,'' Husseini's cousin, Adnan, an Islamic Waqf official, told Reuters.
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PHOTO CAPTION

Palestinian workers put up a picture of Palestinian Minister in charge of Jerusalem affairs Faisal al-Husseini at the Orient house, the East Jerusalem headquarters of the PLO May 31, 2001. Al-Husseini died of a heart attack in Kuwait on Thursday. (Ammar Awad/Reuters)
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