{Cuban leader’s ashes interred in a private ceremony in the city of Santiago, ending nine days of mourning.}<\/p>\n
Fidel Castro’s ashes were interred on Sunday at a cemetery in the southeastern city of Santiago – the cradle of the Cuban revolution – with the military firing a 21-gun salute for their fallen leader.<\/p>\n
Initially the act at the cemetery was due to be carried live on television, but hours before official media announced it would be “solemn and private”.<\/p>\n
An urn containing Castro’s ashes was brought by soldiers to the cemetery of Santa Ifigenia in Santiago, 800km south-east of Havana. Thousands of people lined the road, waving Cuban flags and shouting “Long live Fidel!”.<\/p>\n
The remains of the man who ruled Cuba for a half-century left the Plaza of the Revolution in the eastern city at 6:39am local time, more than 20 minutes ahead of their scheduled departure. <\/p>\n
Al Jazeera’s Lucia Newman, reporting from Santiago, said members of Castro’s family and top government officials close to the former leader attended the private ceremony.<\/p>\n
“This is very much a state affair, but the funeral itself is not a state funeral,” Newman said. <\/p>\n
Castro died on November 25 at age 90. His final resting place is near the mausoleum of 19th century independence icon Jose Marti and other national heroes.<\/p>\n
After two days of events in Havana, Castro’s funeral cortege departed on a three-day journey east, retracing the route that the triumphant rebels took upon overthrowing US-backed Fulgencio Batista in 1959.<\/p>\n
On Saturday evening, President Raul Castro, his brother and successor, said “millions” had come out to pay tribute.<\/p>\n
In keeping with his wishes, Castro’s image will not be immortalised with statues nor will public places be named after him, his brother said on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Crowds have greeted the caravan along the whole route, with volunteers sprucing up bridges and houses<\/p>\n
With his brother at his side, Castro began his revolution on July 26, 1953, with a failed assault on the Moncada barracks in Santiago.<\/p>\n
He went on to build a Soviet-sponsored communist state 145km from the United States and survived a half century of US attempts to topple or kill him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Cuban leader’s ashes interred in a private ceremony in the city of Santiago, ending nine days of mourning.} Fidel Castro’s ashes were interred on Sunday at a cemetery in the southeastern city of Santiago – the cradle of the Cuban revolution – with the military firing a 21-gun salute for their fallen leader. Initially the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-30828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30828"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=30828"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=30828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}