10 000 Palestinians bury dead
2004-05-24 21:23
Rafah - Thousands of Palestinians packed a Rafah football stadium to pay their last respects to 16 victims of Israel's offensive here, hours after the army ended its occupation of the battered Tal al-Sultan area.
About 10 000 Palestinians, some of them armed, marched through the streets of the poverty-stricken town in the southern Gaza Strip to the stadium and on to the main Rafah cemetery, where radical militants vowed to seek revenge.
"Our martyrs will savour the rest they deserve," said local Islamic Jihad commander Shaher Abu Radi. "We will continue your struggle until we have taken back our capital Al-Quds (Jerusalem)".
The winding funeral cortege in Rafah, on the border with Egypt, came under Israeli machine-gun fire, sending mourners scurrying for cover. Two Palestinians were wounded, according to sources at the Rafah hospital.
Amid global pressure on Israel to put a stop to the week-long raid in Rafah that has left 43 Palestinians dead, Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz told the cabinet on Sunday that the operation "would continue for several days, but not for several weeks".
Early on Monday, Israeli tanks and troops that had encircled Tal al-Sultan - the site of last week's most deadly clashes - pulled out of the area, as the military continued to scale back its controversial Operation Rainbow.
Sharon pledges revised plan
The soldiers had forcibly taken over houses in the neighbourhood at the beginning of the operation on May 18 to secure vantage points for teams of army snipers. Many homes there had been either fully or partially demolished.
The army pursued its demolition campaign throughout the day in the Brazil area of Rafah, with tanks providing cover for bulldozers. Soldiers in a tank opened fire at people trying to approach the site.
Israel has been the target of sharp international criticism over the house demolitions in Rafah, which it says is necessary to prevent increasingly sophisticated weapons from being smuggled in under the border from Egypt.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, meanwhile, has pledged to put his revised plan for a gradual military withdrawal from the entire Gaza Strip to his cabinet next Sunday.
The new plan calls for a phased military pullout as well as the evacuation of 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and a few in the northern West Bank.
In the West Bank town of Ramallah, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat met with Egypt's intelligence chief General Omar Suleiman, during which Arafat's freedom of movement was discussed.
Arafat, who has been kept under virtual house arrest by the Israeli army since December 2001, did not comment on the issue after the meeting, saying his talks with Suleiman focused on means of reviving the moribund peace process.