Some 8,000 Palestinians packed the centre of the main northern West Bank city of Nablus on Thursday as they paid their last respects to five Palestinians and a schoolgirl slain in a raid by Israeli troops.
The crowds thronged the streets in mid-morning as the funeral cortege wove its way from the city's Rafidya hospital before coming to a halt in the central Martyrs' Square where traditional prayers for the dead were recited.
The six were all killed during a major Israeli raid in Nablus on one of the bloodiest days in the West Bank of the four-year intifada.
The five men, four of whom were members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, were killed in a shootout with Israeli troops.
Relatives and medics said that 11-year-old Maram Al-Nahleh had also been shot dead by Israeli soldiers when she went to look at the ambulances taking away the bodies.
Scores of masked men released volleys of gunfire into the air, as the crowds chanted calls for revenge attacks and their support for the Al-Aqsa Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's mainstream Fatah movement.
Gaza gunmen free top security official
Palestinian gunmen freed a top security official on Thursday hours after abducting him in the Gaza Strip in a fresh challenge to President Yasser Arafat's rule amid a wave of unrest, witnesses said.
Brigadier-General Mohammad Al-Batrawi, an Arafat appointee and chief of financial surveillance for the security services, was released unharmed after being held by armed men from the Palestinian leader's own Fatah movement, the witnesses said.
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