The funeral for former Israeli president Shimon Peres is taking place, let's go live to Mount Herzl Cemetery in Jerusalem, where the ceremony is being held.

The casket has just been carried. U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders have gathered in the city to commemorate Peres, the Israeli president whose pursuit of an elusive peace deal with the Palestinians won international praise. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is also attending the burial. Peres, who died on Wednesday aged 93, jointly won a Nobel Prize for his peace efforts with the Palestinians in the 1990s.

Some 70 countries were represented. The range of leaders illustrated the respect Peres gained over the years in his transformation from hawk to committed peace advocate.

An estimated 50,000 people filed past his coffin as it lay in state outside parliament in Jerusalem.

Peres will be buried in a Jewish religious ceremony, in a plot between two former prime ministers, Yitzhak Rabin and Yitzhak Shamir. Rabin was assassinated by an ultranationalist Israeli in 1995 over the interim peace deals that he and Peres reached with the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.