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Others were more bellicose. Ata Zaniin, a senior Palestine Red Crescent ambulance man in northern Gaza who was on duty at the funeral, described the town’s grief as "indescribable, totally indescribable".

Mr Zaniin, one of those who picked up the dead on the day of the incident, said the Israeli shelling was the single-worst incident in Gaza during his 17 years as head of the Palestine Red Crescent Society in northern Gaza.

"I carried bodies, pieces of bodies," he said. "Not just one, two or three, but the whole street was covered in bodies. People wounded, people dead."

He fully supported retaliatory attacks on Israel, saying: "We are with the continuation of resistance, even if the price is as big as this."

"Whoever wants to liberate his country has to pay the price. Resistance is legitimate according to international law."

With the old burial ground full, the bodies were buried in a new cemetery behind the town’s Faculty of Agriculture, which just days ago before had served as an Israeli base and interrogation centre during Israeli’s six-day siege in Beit Hanoun, immediately prior to the shelling.

Ordinarily on a Thursday morning, the town would be heaving with people. In the hours before the funeral though, the streets were all but deserted, with a three-day mourning period declared by Palestinian leaders keeping shops closed.

Athough prominent voices have urged restraint on all sides, some Hamas leaders called for renewed attacks on Israel. Khaled Mashaal, the supreme leader of Hamas party who lives in exile in Damascus, cancelled a cease-fire with Israel that has largely held since February 2005, and warned of retaliation.

"I call upon all resistance factions to activate their resistance programmes," he said at a press conference in Syria. "The cowardly act of Zionists requires a legitimate Palestinian action.

"We have big trust in our military wings, which will reply on this aggression and resist occupation and retaliate for those victims."

Palestinian officials said Mr Abbas had today spoken by telephone to Mashaal - their first conversation in months - in an attempt to restart negotiations over forming a more moderate joint government.

Hamas’ military wing also called for attacks against American targets in retaliation, a call which the group’s political leaders in Gaza did not endorse.

Amir Peretz, the Israeli Defence Minister, ordered a halt to artillery fire in Gaza and called an inquiry. Israeli police, fearing revenge attacks, stepped up their alert level, mobilising forces across the country.

And Mr Olmert tried his best to encourage the Palestinian leader to meet him "any time, any place". "He will be surprised when he will sit with me of how far we are prepared to go. I can offer him a lot," he said.

The criticism comes just days before Mr Olmert is due to go to Washington to meet George Bush, who while stopping short of reprimanding Israel for the strike, said he was saddened by the deaths and urged restraint on both sides.

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