More than 30,000 people angrily took to the streets in the Gaza Strip and West Bank Friday to bury four Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers on Thursday.
Some 30,000 people marched through Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip carrying the body of a 14-year-old boy killed in clashes with soldiers guarding the nearby Gush Katif Jewish settlement.
Some 300 gunmen, about 100 of them masked, led the procession and shouted threats against Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and his army chief Shaul Mofaz.
"The Intifada must go on! Revenge! Revenge! Hamas bring us revenge!" some of the marchers shouted, referring to the Islamic Resistance Movement.
Protesters at the graveyard, which is only some 500 meters (yards) from Gush Katif, also carried flags of the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah.
Mourners held aloft photographs of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and some of the Palestinians killed over the last six weeks of bloodshed that has left some 200 people dead, nearly all of them Arabs.
A banner also said the "militias" of Arafat's faction Fateh would respond to the assassination Thursday of a Fateh guerrilla leader in the West Bank near Bethlehem by an Israeli helicopter that also left two women dead.
In Bethlehem itself, thousands of Palestinians mourning those killed in the helicopter raid packed the town's famous Manger Square, the site where tradition says Jesus Christ was born.
They burned Israeli flags and fired some shots in the air -- KHAN YUNIS (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
