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Fidel Castro laid to rest in private funeral

Fidel Castro laid to rest in private funeral
Fidel Castro's ashes were placed in a granite mausoleum Sunday morning during a private ceremony attended by Castro's little-seen family and a handful of Latin American and African leaders, Cuban state media reported.

The three-minute ceremony at Santiago de Cuba’s Santa Ifigenia Cemetery ended nine days of public mourning for the charismatic but polarizing revolutionary who led Cuba for half a century, CNN reports.

Cuban President Raul Castro slid the box of ashes into an opening in the mausoleum, made from a boulder excavated from the town of Las Guásimas, east of Santiago. The mausoleum was sealed with a plaque that says simply, “Fidel.”

At 7:40 a.m., the brief funeral ended.

The attendees included Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega, Bolivian president Evo Morales, Congolese president Denis Sassou Nguesso, Ethiopian president Mulatu Teshome, Alfred Marie-Jeanne of Martinique and former Brazilian presidents Luiz Ignacio “Lula” da Silva and Dilma Rousseff.

Castro died in Havana on November 25 at age 90.

His ashes arrived Saturday in Santiago after a four-day tour across the island nation. Santiago is located on the eastern end of Cuba, about 880 kilometers (546 miles) from Havana.

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