Israeli soldiers shot into the air as some 4,000 Palestinian mourners joined the funeral Sunday for a man killed during an Israeli operation against a member of the radical Hamas movement 10 days ago, witnesses said.
They said the soldiers fired from an army post near the Neve Dekalim settlement as mourners marched through the nearby Palestinian town of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip for the funeral of Abdullah Khanan, 40.
No one was injured.
Mourners, many of them carrying Palestinian flags, shouted "Revenge, Revenge on the Israeli army and settlers," while some fired shots into the air.
Khanan died on Saturday after being shot on December 14 when the Israeli army killed a member of the armed wing of Hamas during an arrest operation at a military post near the Gush Katif settlement bloc in the southern Gaza Strip.
It was one of a string of targeted attacks by Israeli forces against militants from Hamas, its smaller rival, Islamic Jihad and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fateh faction.
A total of 356 people have been killed in the unrest that has blazed across the Palestinian territories since late September, most of them Palestinians.
Meanwhile, Palestinian police said they were investigating the killing of a Palestinian man whose body was found mutilated near Ar-Ram between Jerusalem and the West Bank town of Ramallah.
Hospital officials said Sahan Rabah Abu Rmelleh, 30, was found Sunday morning beaten to death with one of his hands chopped off.
Also in Ramallah, about 30 armed Fateh members took to the streets in a rally ahead of the anniversary of the first attack mounted against Israel by the movement on January 1, 1965.
Later Sunday, a bomb went off as a bus of Jewish settlers guarded by soldiers traveled near the Netzarim settlement in the Gaza Strip, an Israeli military source said.
No one was injured by the bomb, which could have been a grenade, the source said.
Israeli soldiers responded to the bomb by firing rockets that hit nearby Palestinian towns, Palestinian witnesses said.
Separately, Palestinians said Israeli army bulldozers uprooted fruit trees on 15 hectares (35 acres) of Palestinian land to link a new road to the Gush Katif settlement in the Gaza Strip -- GAZA CITY (AFP)
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