Agencies, The body of Hamas spiritual leader Shaikh Ahmad Yasin has been carried through the streets of Gaza City by resistance fighters at the start of his funeral.
Tens of thousands of mourners accompanied the cortege on Monday as it made its way through the streets of the main Palestinian state with his coffin draped in the green flag of the movement that he founded.
The procession left Gaza's al-Shifa hospital, heading first towards Yasin's house in Gaza. A brief funeral service was then due to be held at a mosque in the centre of the city.
Many of the mourners from a cross-section of Palestinian factions chanted “vengeance, vengeance” while resistance fighters fired off piercing volleys into the air.
Among the crowds gathered outside Yasin's house were three women brandishing M-16 assault rifles. One of the women, who was in her 60s, said she was prepared to take part in an attack in retaliation.
“We are all fighters, all martyrs. We are all prepared to be martyrs,” she told AFP.
The 67-year-old Yasin was later expected to be buried in the city's “martyrs' cemetery” just hours after he was killed in an Israeli helicopter attack.
Assassination
Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles at Yasin as he left a mosque after dawn prayers, killing the Hamas leader and at least eight other people.
One witness who lives near the mosque told reporters what happened moments after the first explosion.
“I looked to see where Shaikh Ahmad Yasin was,” he said. “He was lying on the ground and his chair was destroyed. People there darted left and right. Then another two missiles landed.”
At least nine people died in the attack including at least two of Yasin's bodyguards. Ten more were wounded. Yasin's two sons were moderately hurt.
The Israeli army later admitted it had carried out the killings. Israel has said it will step up operations to track and kill Palestinian resistance fighters after a string of bombings, including one at a strategic port last week in which 10 people were killed.
Yasin has been confined to a wheelchair since an accident as a teenager paralysed him. He was also partially blind.
He was sentenced by Israel in 1989 to a life term for founding Hamas and urging Palestinians to attack Israel.
But Israel released him in 1997 as a goodwill gesture to Jordan's King Husayn after a botched attempt to assassinate Hamas leader Khalid Mishal in Jordan.
Marked for death
An Israeli minister said Yasin had been “marked for death”. “Yasin and the others were behind the terror framework in the Gaza Strip,” Deputy Defence Minister Zeev Boim told Israel Radio.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon personally supervised the attack on Yasin, Israeli public radio reported. Sharon had given the green light to Yasin's assassination and supervised the operation, the radio said.
After the attack, Sharon congratulated security forces and said “the war on terror” would continue.
“The state of Israel this morning hit the first and foremost leader of the Palestinian terrorist murderers,” Sharon said in his first public reaction to the strike. “I want to make clear the war on terrorism is not over and will continue daily everywhere.”
White House's denial
Quick to react, the United States said it had no advance knowledge of the Israeli plans.
“The United States did not have advance warning” of the attack, White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said.
She repeated previous US calls for calm in the wake of the
attack. “We would just ask everyone to step back and do nothing that precludes a better day,” Rice said.
