Lebanon Mourns Mandela, Flags to Fly at Half-Mast on Tuesday
Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Miqati declared on Saturday a day of mourning over the death of former South African president Nelson Mandela.
According to a memo issued by the premier's office, flags will fly at half-mast on Tuesday during the memorial service that will be held in the Soweto sports stadium in South Africa.
On Tuesday around 80,000 people are expected to attend a memorial service in the Soweto sports stadium that hosted the final of the 2010 World Cup.
President Michel Suleiman also tasked Miqati with representing him at the funeral of the modern South Africa's founding father, who died late Thursday aged 95, surrounded by friends and family.
Suleiman considered on Friday that Mandela “inspired the world with his life as an activist to end racism, fight poverty and achieving equality between human beings.”
Miqati also offered his condolences to the current President of South Africa Jacob Zuma in a cable.
Memorial events begin Sunday with South Africans invited to go to churches, mosques, synagogues and other places of worship, to pay their respects.
Mandela's body will lie in state for three days from Wednesday, ahead of his eventual burial on December 15 in his boyhood hometown of Qunu.
The government announced Saturday that his coffin would be taken in a cortege through the streets of Pretoria each morning, giving the millions of South Africans still coming to terms with the death of their first black leader an opportunity to say a final farewell.
Large numbers of mourners, carrying candles, flowers and messages of respect have turned up every day outside Mandela's residence in Johannesburg and in the once blacks-only township of Soweto.
Mandela spent 27 years in apartheid prisons before being elected president in 1994 and unifying his country with a message of reconciliation after the end of white minority rule. He shared the Nobel Peace Prize with South Africa's last white president, F.W. de Klerk, in 1993.
Mandela had waged a long battle against a recurring lung infection and had been receiving treatment at home since September following a lengthy hospital stay.
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