This archive report was first published on 25 December 2019.
General Gaid Salah, the veteran Algerian army chief who died of a heart attack on Monday at the age of 79, was buried in Martyrs' Square in Al-Alia cemetery on December 25, 2019.
The funeral procession, which was attended by thousands of people, began at the People's Palace in Algiers, where the wooden coffin containing Gaid Salah's body was displayed for four hours.
Senior state officials, including interim military chief of staff Said Chengriha and President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, paid their respects to the deceased at the palace.
President Tebboune, who won the presidential election on December 12, 2019, with 58.1 percent of the vote, awarded Gaid Salah the top honour in the National Order of Merit after his win.
However, the protest movement in Algeria had lambasted Gaid Salah, particularly in the lead-up to the presidential election, demanding deep-rooted political reforms before any poll.
Despite this, the crowd gathered at the palace in the morning chanted a modified version of a protest slogan that called Gaid Salah a martyr, instead saying, "Army and people are brothers and Gaid Salah is a martyr."
