(The coffin of Schafik Handal is shown entering the Metropolitan Cathedral of San Salvador where thousands gathered Sunday, Jan. 29, 2006. Photo: AP)

Some 100,000 people joined the funeral cortege of left-wing Salvadorean hero Schafik Handal on Sunday in El Salvador, according to reports from San Salvador.

"Schafik, the people are with you" and "The commander stays with us" were two of the chants sung by people at the service at San Salvador's Cementerio de Los Illustres, burial place of communist leader Agustin Farabundo Marti, who died in 1932, and was Handal's role model.

Before being buried, Handal's body left El Salvador University and made a stop at the Metropolitan Cathedral where assistant archbishop Gregorio Rosa Chavez held a mass for the leader.

In the service, Rosa Chavez said that Handal had been of the nation's most important politicians.

Handal, 75, died last Tuesday as he returned from the inauguration of Bolivia's new president Evo Morales. He was one of the leading figures of the Salvadorean left wing movement. For decades, he led the Farabundo Marti National Liberation front, first as a guerilla movement, then as the largest Salvadorean opposition party.

(Source: Xinhua)