The body of Yasser Arafat was buried in the grounds of his West Bank headquarters Friday amid scenes of chaos as thousands of Palestinians tried to catch a last glimpse of their iconic leader.
His coffin was flown back to the Muqataa headquarters, where he had spent most of the last three years of his life under virtual Israeli house arrest, after a military funeral in the Egyptian capital Cairo.
But the sheer size of the crowds who had gathered on the tarmac meant that officials were unable to unload his casket for nearly 20 minutes.
When he was eventually brought out of the aircraft, hordes pushed their way past the masses of security who unleashed volleys of gunfire in a vain bid to maintain control.
Deafening chants of "With our soul, with our blood, we will support you, Abu Ammar (Arafat)" echoed around the compound which was once home to an Israeli military base.
Wrapped in the Palestinian flag, his body was first loaded onto the roof of a four-wheel drive vehicle before being carried inside the building which had served as his offices in the last years of his life.
He was then buried in a corner of one of the Muqataa's courtyards before the crowd began a prayer joined by Palestinian leaders including newly appointed Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman Mahmud Abbas and prime minister Ahmed Qorei.
Tayssir el-Tamimi, head of religious courts in the Palestinian territories, who visited Arafat at his hospital bedside in France before his death, poured soil from Jerusalem atop the coffin.
Arafat had always wanted to be buried in Jerusalem, home to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound which is the third holiest site in Islam, but Israeli authorities categorically ruled out an Arafat burial in the holy city.
At one stage, the head of Arafat's presidency office, Tayeb Abdelrahim, fainted in the emotional crush and could be seen being treated by medics.
Three people were shot and injured Friday by Palestinian security forces in the chaos. The three injured, including one member of the security forces, were taken away by ambulance.
The crowd numbers had been meant to be limited but at least 10,000 had managed to make their way inside the walls of the sprawling compound by the time the helicopter landed at around 2:17 pm (1217 GMT).
A crowd well in excess of 100,000 had also gathered outside of Ramallah, many of whom carried portraits of the only man they had known as their leader.
Although Israel has hermetically sealed off the West Bank, Palestinians from across the territories made their way to Ramallah to pay homage to the man who dominated Palestinian political life for the last four decades.
Security forces blocked all the main arteries into the city with makeshift roadblocks of wooden crates, oil drums and heaps of rubble, all of which were closely guarded by policemen in black berets.
Fearing that many would be injured in the crush or dehydrated in the blazing heat, the Palestinian Red Crescent deployed at least 100 emergency personnel around the site, backed up by 15 ambulances.
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