Lebanon yesterday observed a national day of mourning as the country buried slain senior army general Fran-çois el-Hajj. But rather than uniting the deeply divided country the assassination seems to have deepened the hatred.

Relatively few people, apart from army officers and soldiers, attended the funeral in the soaring concrete cathedral in Harissa in the Christian heartland north of Beirut. Hundreds of soldiers lined the route of the funeral cortege.