Thousands of Palestinians marched in Gaza today for the funerals of 11 people, including nine militants from the ruling Hamas, who were killed in an Israeli raid into the central Gaza Strip yesterday.
The Israeli army said it had concluded an incursion into central Gaza near the Bureij and Maghazi refugee camps and had pulled its forces out overnight. Local witnesses said the troops had left the area.
Troops with tanks entered Gaza yesterday and killed armed members of the Islamist Hamas movement that seized control of the coastal enclave last month as well as a member of another militant group and a man medical staff said was a civilian.
Thousands of people marched in the streets of Bureij refugee camp and gunmen fired rifles into the air, vowing revenge.
"This blood will only increase our determination to chase the enemy and to strike it and resist by all our might until the last drop of our blood," Hamas's armed wing said in a statement.
Hamas and Fatah called on their members to retaliate. Deposed Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas and a spokesman for the rival Fatah both condemned the Israeli operation and urged Palestinians to fight back.
"We assert that our people have the full right to defend themselves and to confront these aggressions," Haniyeh said, and a Fatah official echoed his thoughts.