GAZA CITY, Sept 7: Israeli tanks, helicopters and warplanes pounded a Hamas training camp on Tuesday, killing 14 militants in the deadliest ever strike against the group a week after it carried out a double suicide bombing.
Tens of thousands of mourners joined the funeral march through Gaza City, bellowing for revenge from Hamas, which killed 16 people on two buses in southern Israel last Tuesday.
"I'm sure there will be responses and such responses will be justified," said Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei, in an unusually strong response from a relative moderate.
All 14 dead were members of the Hamas military wing, killed while being trained in guerilla tactics at a soccer field. A Hamas official said they were training as "elite groups to terrorize the enemy".
The growing spiral of violence could further complicate Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw troops and settlers from the occupied Gaza Strip by the end of next year.
Palestinian militants are determined to claim any Israeli pullout 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 attack in the Jewish state in nearly six months.
Hamas said last week's bombings were in revenge for Israel's killing of two of its top leaders in Gaza earlier this year. Tuesday's strike was Israel's deadliest single blow against Hamas, which has sworn to destroy the Jewish state.
It was the highest single-day death toll in coastal Gaza since May 12, when troops killed 15 Palestinians in raids. 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.
ISRAEL VOWS MORE STRIKES: The Israeli military said Hamas members had been learning to make suicide belts, plant explosives, launch rockets, infiltrate Jewish settlements and kidnap soldiers and civilians.
"We will strike against Hamas wherever we can find it," said Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Ariel Sharon. At least 30,000 sympathizers joined the funeral procession amid billowing green Hamas flags. Some men fired in the air as loudspeakers called for revenge.
"We will sacrifice our souls and blood for the martyrs," the mourners chanted. In an initial reaction, militants launched crude rockets and mortar shells into Israel and Jewish settlements in the coastal strip. One man was slightly hurt when a rocket landed in Israel.
Hamas has led a campaign of suicide bombings against Israelis during a nearly four-year-old Palestinian uprising. Unlike the mainstream Palestinian Authority, which wants independence alongside Israel, Hamas wants to replace it with an Islamic state.
NO REVENGE: The Israeli premier said on Tuesday the Gaza attack was not an act of revenge for last week's suicide bombing in Israel.
"Yesterday's incident in the Gaza Strip, the activity against Hamas, wasn't an act of revenge for the terrible murder in Beersheva," Mr Sharon said at a meeting of his Likud faction.
"It was part of our ongoing war against terror, a struggle that we will not stop until the end of terror, which will allow - I believe - progress in the political process."
FIRST AID: As the people of Gaza buried their dead on Tuesday, youngsters who were given the day off school gawped at the spot where the 14 Hamas fighters died in the darkness.
Ironically, the Hamas militants were taking part in a first aid exercise when the devastating attack ripped into them, according to Sami Ahmed, a 29-year-old labourer who witnessed the attack. -AFP/Reuters
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