Veiled and carrying mobile phones and handbags, they charged past Israeli tanks and armoured bulldozers through the streets of a border town in the midst of the most intensive Israeli military operation in northern Gaza in recent months.

The fighters, who had been holed up in the mosque for at least 36 hours, were to have been smuggled out in women’s clothes — some of the marchers wore double sets under their voluminous black cloaks and veils.

When shooting broke out, two women were killed and dozens more injured by Israeli troops. The Israeli army insists that it hit eight gunmen hiding in the crowd and criticised the militants for using the women as cover for their battle.

But many of the marchers accused Israeli tanks and snipers of shooting into unarmed crowds of women, and claimed that several were wounded before they got anywhere near the Nasr mosque in Beit Hanoun. The stand-off renewed criticism of guerrillas operating from within civilian areas during the war in Lebanon this summer and the scale and effectiveness of the Israeli response.

As she emerged with other veiled women from the town centre with machinegun fire still rattling behind her, Umm Bara, 25, said that she was among thousands who answered the overnight call on the Hamas al-Aqsa radio to free their beseiged “brothers and cousins”.

“We reached the mosque. There was a tank between us and the mosque. A group ahead of us managed to get the besieged out,” she said.

Then, she added, a tank opened fire on her group. “They shot six women in front of me. One of them was pregnant. Two women were killed.”

Other groups of women descended on the town from other directions as part of a concerted plan – confirmed by Hamas later – to create a diversion.

A spokeswoman for the Israel Defence Forces condemned militants for using — “with no shame” — human shields, “knowing the IDF would not shoot at women and children”.

The spokeswoman said that the gunmen ignored repeated calls to surrender from Israeli forces surrounding the mosque, who used means “specifically designed” to minimise damage to the building.

But as the tanks and bulldozers moved in and the building collapsed during the attack, the stand-off degenerated into a “heavy exchange of fire”.

Lying in hospital with a dressing to a shrapnel wound on her forehead, Elham Hamad, 45, said that Israeli tanks opened fire on her group even though they did not get within 300m of the mosque.

“We had white flags and all of us were women. They didn’t tell us to stop or leave, they didn’t even stick their heads out of the tank. They started shooting at us with the tank’s machinegun.”

In a nearby bed Nehla Abu al-Jobain, 35, conceded that some women wore two sets of clothes beneath their gowns to give one to the fighters.

Hamas denied planning to evacuate men in women’s clothes. “The Israeli army is operating in a densely populated area . . . they are destroying civilian infrastructure and have been using Palestinians as human shields for years, which is well documented by Israeli and international human rights groups,” a masked spokesman in Gaza City retorted.

Beit Hanoun was all but sealed off from the outside world during the siege and earlier military operation, called to curb rocket attacks on Israel. Israel rounded up men aged 16-45 but scores of militants eluded the net and fled to the mosque.

In the early hours of the siege, The Times saw tanks moving through otherwise deserted streets as scores of youths mingled with armed men behind the cover of smoke from a burning tyre. Throughout the operation Hamas continued to fire rockets from the Beit Hanoun area and further inside the Gaza Strip.

Hamas said that 73 people in total had been inside the mosque — 69 armed men and four civilians — and repeatedly appealed for women to march on the building. By noon yesterday freshly printed leaflets bearing the logo of the military wing of Hamas were already being handed out by eager schoolchildren outside emergency wards, proclaiming: “The women of north Gaza arose to help Beit Hanoun.”

The final tally of dead and injured was still confusing last night. Medical officials claimed that two women were killed and about 70 people injured.

Amid the chaos records were unreliable. The Times arrived at the mourning tent of one woman pronounced dead, only for the bemused “martyr” to turn up at her own funeral, saying: “I’m fine”.

Another woman was lying, dead in the mortuary, her face blown away.

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