Grieving Palestinians pledge bloody revenge for killing of Hamas leader

Hamas moved swiftly yesterday to build a new underground leadership in the aftershock of Israel's assassination of Abdel Azis Rantissi little more than three weeks after he took over as head of the faction in Gaza.

Hamas moved swiftly yesterday to build a new underground leadership in the aftershock of Israel's assassination of Abdel Azis Rantissi little more than three weeks after he took over as head of the faction in Gaza.

It secretly designated the third Gaza leader in a month to replace Mr Rantissi, who was assassinated by a helicopter missile that destroyed his car on Saturday near his home. His driver and bodyguard were killed instantly.

Khaled Mashaal, chairman of the Hamas political bureau in Damascus, ordered Hamas to choose a new leader in the Strip but not to name him in the hope of preventing him becoming an immediate target for a fresh assassination. Hamas used the second huge funeral procession in Gaza within a month to mount a defiant and emotional demonstration of support and continuity in the face of the loss of the hardline and utterly uncompromising figurehead Israel holds personally responsible for the deaths of scores of its own citizens in suicide attacks.

As tens of thousands of chanting supporters packed into the narrow streets of Gaza City's old souk district to accompany Mr Rantissi's body from his home to the al-Omari mosque, Hamas activists handed out hastily printed leaflets to bystanders announcing the decision on the new leadership. The leaflets pledged "to the Palestinian and Arab nation that the resistance will continue".

Discolouration was still visible on Mr Rantissi's pallid and bearded face as his body, covered with a sheet and green Hamas flag, left the mosque on an open stretcher borne through a dense, swaying crowd by armed balaclava-clad pallbearers from the faction's Qassam military wing. There were volleys of gunfire into the air as the procession wound away from the mosque beneath a 30ft green banner with the Muslim proclamation: "There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is the messenger of Allah".

As the procession wound towards the Sheikh Bedwan cemetery, the crowd chanted: "Our blood, our souls, we sacrifice for you, Rantissi."

On the side of Lababidi street in Gaza city yesterday, there were still fragments of charred debris from Mr Rantissi's burnt-out white Subaru where it had slowed to a halt opposite a mineral water shop some 30 yards on from where it took the missile hit.

Amal Abdul Jawad, 35, who runs the shop, said he was outside at the time. "I heard a very loud explosion. I rushed into my house because the glass had broken and I wanted to see if my family was all right. Then I came down with a fire extinguisher and helped to put the fire out. My brothers also came with water from the shop."

He said the two men in front had been killed instantly, and that Mr Rantissi, whom he had not immediately recognised, was in the back. "People tried to pull him out but the front seats had collapsed on his knees. He was moving but he couldn't speak and he was bleeding from the mouth and nose." Mr Jawad said that the Hamas leader had finally been pulled out by his shoulders. No ambulance arrived so bystanders had stopped a passing motorist to take him to Shifa Hospital, where he died. Mr Jawad said the process had taken longer because passers-by feared another missile attack.

The green flags of the Hamas supporters mingled in a show of unity with the yellow and black banners of Islamic Jihad, the yellow ones of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and the occasional red one of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Ahmed Jebril, secretary general of the PFLP-GC (General Command), based in Damascus, warned of an "open war against the Zionist-American enemy and Arabs ... who side with them".

Hamas activists repeatedly pledged through loudspeakers that the faction would easily survive the assassination as it had that of Sheikh Yassin, leading incantations of "Your leader? Rantissi. Your way? Resistance. Your movement? Hamas. Your hope? To be martyrs."

With repeated grenade explosions and gunfire, Mr Rantissi was buried on the slopes of Sheikh Bedwan amid a huge crowd of mourners .

Earlier, in the mourning tent close to the Rantissi home, the Hamas leader's son Mohammed, 25, said he had gone to the scene of the attack. After he was told of his father's death he went home to join his mother and receive condolences. His father had not been living at home, he said. "He was a fugitive; he stayed in different houses at different times." Asked whether he expected retaliation in vengeance for the assassination of his father, he said: "God willing," adding that this was a matter for the military wing of Hamas. Before the funeral procession left the neighbourhood, hundreds of the mourners pointed skywards shouting "Allah-u-akbar" (God is great). A Hamas activist said: "Our leaders are presented to death before our normal soldiers. Millions of Hamas supporters will follow you, Mr Rantissi, until we gain the whole of Palestine."

Most bystanders expressed strong support for Hamas and its assassinated leader. "Now every Palestinian is required to get revenge for this, not just Hamas," said Mohammed al-Haj, 28.But one of his friends, who gave his name only as Ameen, said that for all the predictions of revenge after Sheikh Yassin's killing, none had materialised. "Hamas has taken many losses in the West Bank," Ameen, 26, admitted.

Mr Rantissi said in a BBC interview not long before his death that if he had the choice between dying because of a heart attack or an Apache helicopter he would choose the latter. In exuberant homage to this preference for martyrdom over natural death an unknown graffiti artist had early yesterday covered a wall close to Mr Rantissi's home with his own epitaph in Arabic for the Hamas leader: "You got what you wanted, Abu Mohammed [father of Mohammed] You win."

¿ Israeli prosecutors yesterday indicted a 16-year-old would-be suicide bomber whose globally televised surrender last month brought condemnation of Palestinian militants. Hussam Abdu had a bomb strapped to his body when soldiers stopped him at a checkpoint near Nablus.