Nine people, including three children who were on a crowded Gaza beach, were killed today in an Israeli air strike, Palestinians claimed.

The Israeli army said the ships were targeting militants who launched rockets against the Jewish state after Israel’s killing of a senior security chief in the Hamas government.

Palestinian extremists have threatened to send suicide bombers to "every corner" of Israel after the killing of Jamal Abu Samhadana.

Samhadana, a 43-year-old explosives expert suspected of attacking a convoy of US diplomats in the Gaza Strip in 2003, was recently named Director General of ruling part Hamas's security forces.

He was the first senior member of the three-month old Hamas-led government to be killed by Israel and the most prominent Palestinian militant to be targeted since the death of the Hamas commander, Salah Shehadeh, in 2002.

The rising death toll stoked tensions as Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh made a last-minute appeal to President Mahmoud Abbas to abandon a proposed referendum on statehood that would implicitly recognise Israel.

Haniyeh called for President Abbas to back down for the sake of Palestinian unity after Israel’s Samhadana's death.

The president is expected to issue a presidential decree tomorrow that will call for the holding of a referendum on the statehood proposal by July 31 because Hamas has refused to back it.

The proposed manifesto implicitly recognises Israel by calling for a Palestinian state on all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Samhadana died with at least three other militants as he entered a training camp for the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), a shadowy armed faction set up during the last Intifada that is believed to overlap with Hamas and to have launched numerous rocket and suicide attacks against Israel.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians poured onto the streets of Gaza to mourn his death.

"Our martyrs in waiting will blow up their bodies into the depths of the Zionist entity," his supporters shouted from loudspeakers.

Although well known in Gaza and the West Bank as a leading militant for some years, Samhadana shot to larger prominence six weeks ago when he was named to the upper echelons of Hamas's security apparatus.

His promotion coincided with the creation of a brand new 3,000-strong black-shirted police force, set up by Hamas to counter Fatah-led militias and policemen still loyal to the former governing party.

His provocative appointment was then vetoed by the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas. In the process, Samhadana became a symbol of Hamas's determination to include known militants in its government, its continued defiance of Israel, and its deteriorating relationship with Fatah. At least 10 people have been killed in spiralling tit-for-tat violence between Fatah and Hamas in recent weeks.

In an interview with the Associated Press ten days ago, Samhadana made his views plain, accusing Israel of trying to foment a civil war in the Palestinian Territories and telling an American journalist: "We are happy when any American soldier is killed anywhere in the world, because the American Army is an aggressor against all the people in the world, particularly the Arab and Muslim worlds."

As news of Samhadana's death spread last night, PRC gunmen took to the streets, demanding revenge.

"God willing, our retaliation shall come," blared a loudspeaker on a car belonging to Abu Sharif, a PRC leader.

"It will not be by statements, but by rockets toward Sderot and all the Zionist community. It will be by self-sacrificing martyrs who will blow up themselves in every corner."

Shortly afterwards, at least two rockets were fired towards Sderot, a town in southern Israel. One damaged a building but no one was hurt.

This morning, as Said Siyam, the Hamas Interior Minister, prepared to address tens of thousands of mourners at Samhadana's funeral, a Hamas MP said: "All options are open for the resistance groups to deliver a message to the enemy that must equal the magnitude of Abu Samhadana’s loss."

So many Palestinians joined the funeral procession in Rafah this afternoon that no mosque was large enough to accommodate them, and a football stadium was swiftly converted to hear open-air prayers. Masked gunmen fired automatic weapons into the air, chanting: "God is great," and "Revenge, revenge."

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