MIDDLE EAST: At least 200,000 Palestinians, many weeping, flooded Gaza's streets yesterday to join the funeral march for Hamas militant leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, slain in an Israeli missile strike after his dawn prayers.
In the biggest public outpouring of grief Gazans could remember, mourners walked three kilometres to Sheikh Yassin's final resting place in the Martyrs' Cemetery of Gaza City's Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, a seething Islamist stronghold.
"I cried today as I never cry. I do not recall crying so much when I lost my own father. I believe a black future awaits this region," said Gaza City taxi driver Mr Ayman Oman.
Hundreds of armed, masked militants from the grassroots Islamic movement, Hamas, which Sheikh Yassin co-founded, and other factions, including the mainstream Fatah of President Yasser Arafat, took part in the funeral cortege.
The funeral was the biggest show of support for Mr Arafat since his triumphant entry into Gaza in 1994, at the start of a period of relative peace between Israel and the Palestinians. "Farewell, Sheikh Yassin, you who are the best and most honest leader," cried a woman seated on a street corner as Sheikh Yassin's body was carried by on the shoulders of Hamas men to the cemetery.
"We are all Yassin," the marchers chanted, vowing swift revenge. Dozens of masked gunmen among them fired in the air. One militant's mask was soaked with tears. "We lost a great hero. We lost a leader and a teacher," he said.
Just a week ago Sheikh Yassin said in an interview, "When a Hamas leader is killed, a hundred other leaders arise."
Vows of revenge on Israel filled the air above the march and were spelt out in fresh graffiti coating the facades of a football stadium where a traditional green Muslim mourning tent was set up for Sheikh Yassin's relatives to gather after his burial.
"The assassination of the Hamas leader Yassin amounts to a decision to execute hundreds of Zionists [in reprisal]", trumpeted the graffiti as thousands of Palestinians squeezed by into the stadium to extend their condolences.
The queue stretched around a block as strident Islamic music boomed from loudspeakers lining the stadium pitch.
Those paying their last respects included assault rifle-bearing militants and clerics in traditional robes. Some mourners sat in stony silence on plastic chairs.
Marchers from the al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, part of Fatah, also swore to avenge the killing of Sheikh Yassin, calling him "the symbol of Palestinian jihad and resistance".
Israel stepped up "track and kill" operations against Hamas leaders after suicide bombers killed 10 people in a major port last week in an unprecedented attack that unnerved Israelis.
Hamas, sworn to destroy Israel, has been behind attacks that killed scores of Israelis during three-and-a-half years of open conflict and more during a period of interim peace before that.
"Today is the beginning of the new intifada," said a civil servant named Ahmed.
Sheikh Yassin did not go underground, unlike many comrades and despite an Israeli attempt to kill him in September, aides said.
He kept up his routine of attending morning prayers at the Islamic Compound mosque, which he founded and where he preached holy war against the Jewish state.
In ramshackle Sabra, some of Sheikh Yassin's neighbours fainted at the sight of his smashed and bloodied wheelchair.
Many Gazans wept. Shopkeepers closed down and schools sent pupils home.