Rabbi's funeral 'largest' in Israel history
08 Oct 201308:00 AM
Rabbi's funeral 'largest' in Israel history
More than 800,000 people took to Jerusalem's streets to mourn the spiritual leader of Israel's Sephardic Jews, in an unprecedented procession for an influential figure who died after surgery.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, 93, wielded enormous influence among Israeli Jews of Middle Eastern and North African ancestry but courted controversy with his outspoken views.

He had been in and out of hospital for months and undergone heart surgery, before dying in hospital on Monday.

The mourners, mostly ultra-Orthodox Jews and with men separated from women, gathered outside Yosef's seminary, before heading to his burial in Jerusalem's conservative Sanhedria district.

"We estimate there are more (than) 700,000 people taking part in the largest of funerals ever in Israel," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld wrote on Twitter.

Officially, there are currently slightly over six million Jews in Israel, meaning more than one in every 10 was at the funeral.