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GVs & SV Dignitaries lining up (2 shots)
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MV Dyan putting skull cap on
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MV Mrs. Meir
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MV ZOOM OUT TO GV & SV Coffin being carried and laid down (5 shots)
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SV mourners pan to coffin being lowered into grave (2 shots)
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SCU PAN Dyan, Meir and other dignitaries and mourners and GV of grave side mourners
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Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: Israel's founding father and first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, was laid to rest this week (Monday, December 3) in a hill-top grave overlooking the Negev Desert kibbutz of Sdeh Boker where he had lived for twenty years.

The whole country came to a standstill in tribute to the 87-years-old elder statesman who died on Saturday (December 1) after suffering a stroke two weeks ago.

Just as he'd chosen to live in a remote settlement as an example to Israeli youth, Mr. Ben Gurion chose to be buried overlooking that settlement rather than in the country's traditional cemetery of honour on Jerusalem's Mount Herzl.

The funeral service itself was a simple ceremony attended by only about two hundred people but there had also been a much larger one in the forecourt of the Knesset (Parliament) in Jerusalem where Mr. Ben Gurion's body had lain in state since Saturday. Over three hundred thousand mourners had filed past the catafalque in tribute, including leaders of Israel's Arab and Druze communities.

After the ceremony at the Knesset, also attended by Arab and Druze leaders as well as many foreign delegations, the casket was borne by eight colonels to a helicopter which took it to Sdeh Boker.

There, watched by an audience of government leaders, close friends, relatives and people from neighbouring settlements, his body was lowered into his grave which is beside that of his wife Paula who died five years ago.