MIDDLE EAST: Thousands of Palestinians crowded the streets of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza yesterday, some firing guns into the air, as they buried 18 members of a single family who died in an Israeli artillery strike.
As ambulances brought the dead from hospital morgues into the town, one distraught man carried in the air the body of a small child wrapped in white cloth. The child's head hung exposed as he walked through the chanting crowd.
In Jerusalem, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said a "technical failure" was to blame for the strike before dawn on Wednesday in which several artillery shells hit houses in a residential street in Beit Hanoun.
The deaths, all from the extended Athamna family and among them 14 women and children, provoked a wave of international condemnation and renewed threats of violence from Palestinian militant groups.
"It was not a planned attack," Mr Olmert told a business conference. "It was a technical failure of the Israeli artillery. I checked it, and I verified it." He expressed regret but went on to say that military operations would continue in Gaza as long as Palestinian militants fired rockets at Israeli towns.
The explanation was of little comfort to some in the town yesterday who spoke in terms of violent revenge. "The reaction should be even harder than the attack," said Hijam Basyani (40), standing at the spot where the shells had struck. Three of her cousin's sons died in the incident. "You cannot imagine our feeling when we see this blood, these children killed. You feel ready to explode."
"We have to fight Israel," said Islam Odwan (19), a student from Gaza's Islamic University, who was in the procession. "When they leave us alone, then we will stop." Posters appeared yesterday morning on walls across the town with photographs of some of the men, mostly militants, who died in battles with Israeli troops during a six-day operation in the town that ended a day before the artillery strike. Residents had been confined to their houses and several buildings had been damaged and orchard gardens torn up by tanks and bulldozers. Israel said it had been trying to halt the firing of crude Qassam rockets into Israeli territory and that it had uncovered a large number of weapons and hit some rocket launching cells.
Muhammad Ramadan, an Arabic language professor at the Islamic University, described how Israeli soldiers blew a hole in the wall of his bedroom and took up positions in his house for a day during last week's operation. "We need to respond and it has to be a military action. This is for our honour," he said.
Gaza's militant factions have used the incident to call for an increase in attacks on Israel and the Israeli authorities said yesterday there had been a marked rise in threat warnings. A gay pride march scheduled to take place today in Jerusalem was cancelled and the event confined to a sports stadium because police said they were overstretched.
Ismail Radwan, a spokesman for Hamas, which won Palestinian elections early this year, said militant groups had to respond. "The Palestinian military groups are ready to respond." Asked if that meant a return to suicide bombing, he said: "The military wing of Hamas can choose and decide what is the right way to respond."
Others, however, were more moderate and said there should be a return to negotiations. "We want peace, but we want an equal and fair peace," said Khalil Masri (65), who runs a private health clinic in Beit Hanoun. He said he opposed a return to the campaign of suicide bombing. "Violence only creates violence. The Palestinians and Israelis are both living here. We need two states living side by side and that day will come, I am sure of that." As he spoke, the bodies of the dead were lowered into graves dug into a sandy expanse of land on the outskirts of town. The graves were marked with palm fronds.
In the Israeli press there was criticism of the military, with the left-leaning Ha'aretz newspaper describing the attack as an "atrocity" and a "fearsome and senseless killing" for which Israel was responsible. But Ephraim Sneh, the deputy defence minister, told the Jerusalem Post that the "moral responsibility" for the deaths lay with militants who operate from within civilian areas.
Others were more forthright. "When you fire rockets, shells fall. When one of them strays it is a shame, it is disastrous, it is bad, but that is how it is," wrote journalist Ben Caspit in the popular Ma'ariv newspaper. "Every other method has been tried, and failed. With scoundrels you behave like a scoundrel, and with murderous, bloodthirsty terrorism that wants to wipe you off the map, you have to respond accordingly: wipe it out."