MIDDLE EAST: Tens of thousands of mourners called for revenge during a funeral march in Gaza city for 14 Hamas militants killed yesterday by Israeli tanks.
Israeli tanks, helicopters and warplanes pounded a Hamas training camp early yesterday, in the deadliest-ever strike against the Islamic faction a week after it carried out a double suicide bombing.
"I'm sure there will be responses and such responses will be justified," said Palestinian Prime Minister Mr Ahmed Qurie, in an unusually strong response from a relative moderate.
All 14 dead were members of the Hamas military wing, killed while being trained in guerrilla tactics at a soccer field.
A Hamas official said they were training as "elite groups to terrorise the enemy". The growing spiral of violence could further complicate Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw troops and settlers from the occupied Gaza Strip by the end of 2005.
Palestinian militants are determined to claim any Israeli pull-out as a victory, but Israel has vowed to smash them first.
Israeli leaders have pledged harsh reprisals, including the resumption of a campaign to assassinate Hamas leaders, in response to the Beersheba bus bombings, the first suicide attacks in the Jewish state in nearly six months.
Tanks stationed at the border between Israel and Gaza unleashed a barrage of fire on Shijaia, a Gaza city suburb, just after midnight. Warplanes and helicopters launched missiles.
Gaza's main hospital was overwhelmed by casualties, many of them fighters in camouflage with masks over their faces.
More than 20, including several civilian bystanders, were hurt.
Also yesterday, Israel began freeing more than 150 Palestinian prisoners of an estimated 7,000 it holds in its jails in the largest mass release in more than seven months.
The Palestinian Authority dismissed the move as meaningless, and Israeli officials said it was meant not as a goodwill gesture but to ease conditions in prisons overflowing with detainees rounded up over the past four years.
All were nearing the end of their jail terms and most had been convicted of minor offences such as stone-throwing or illegal entry into the Jewish state, security sources said.