DAMASCUS (Dispatches) – A former Syrian lawmaker felled by Zionist sniper fire was laid to rest Monday in an official funeral attended by hundreds of people near Damascus.
Midhat Saleh, a well-known figure in Syria, was fatally shot Saturday in Ein el-Tineh, a village along the Golan Heights occupied by the Zionist regime where he ran a Syrian government office. Syria said he was killed by Zionist sniper fire.
On Monday, Saleh’s coffin, wrapped in a Syrian flag, was brought in an ambulance from the Mamdouh Abaza hospital in Qunetira to Jaramana, on the outskirts of Damascus, for burial at a Druze cemetery. Hundreds of people attended, in addition to senior officials and Druze clerics.
Saleh was born in Majdal Shams, in the Zionist-occupied side of the Golan, and was jailed several times by the occupying regime, most recently for 12 years until 1997. He later moved to Syria, was elected to parliament in 1998 and served as an adviser to the government on the Golan issue.
Saleh’s son, Golan, a 17-year-old student, said that his father has always told him that the territory would return to Syria.
“I am proud that my father was martyred,” he said.
In a statement announcing his death, Syria’s Presidency of the Council of Ministers said Saleh was “targeted by the Israeli enemy with bursts of treacherous bullets while returning to his home.”
Hussein Arnous, Syria’s prime minister, described Saleh’s assassination as a cowardly act.
Hussam Edin Aala, the country’s United Nations representative, called him “a man who devoted his life to defending the rights of his people in the occupied Syrian Golan.”
Hamas said the assassination will not deter the resistance of the locals and their outright rejection of the Zionist regime’s policies.