Thousands of Palestinians buried 18 victims of an Israeli artillery strike yesterday amid gunfire and the clamour for revenge.

Even as the bodies were laid to rest Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, apologised and offered to meet President Abbas, the Palestinian leader, “any time, any place”. He said that the Israeli artillery barrage that killed 18 civilians in Beit Hanoun on Wednesday was caused by a technical failure, adding: “I’m very uncomfortable with this event. I’m very distressed.”

His remarks came as mourners, holding aloft the flag-draped bodies of children, surged through Gaza carrying the dead from the shrapnel-scarred house where they were killed to a new cemetery. The victims, most from one family — the Athamnas — were wrapped in the yellow flags of Mr Abbas’s moderate Fatah party. The bodies of the two youngest girls, Maysa, aged 1, and her sister Maram, 4, were buried in the same grave as their mother.

Many fear that the passions aroused by their deaths will lead Hamas, Fatah and other militants to revive suicide bombings in Israel. Cries of “God is greater than Israel and America” echoed across the burial ground — which a few days earlier had been seized by Israel as a military base and interrogation centre.

Abdel al-Hakim Awad, a Fatah spokesman, told mourners: “The Zionist enemy understands only the language of force and therefore I say, ‘An eye for an eye, a nose for a nose.’

“The residents of Sderot, the residents of Ashkelon, even the residents of Tel Aviv, are not going to enjoy security or peace as long as you are suffering, our beloved people, in Beit Hanoun.”

Perhaps to head off such a reaction Mr Olmert offered an olive branch, telling Mr Abbas: “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 insisted, however, that Israel would maintain its military operations in Gaza if Palestinian rocket attacks continued.

Hamas leaders have also threatened to renew suicide attacks on Israel, although the Islamist organisation last night backed away from warnings of “hard lessons” for America, ruling out strikes at US targets.

Abu Obaida, spokesman for its military wing, said: “We have no intention of directing attacks except at the Israeli occupation.” He refused to be drawn on “when and if” Hamas would strike at Israel, saying only: “The situation on the ground in the theatre dictates what tactics will be used against the Israeli occupation.”

Palestinians have been so enraged by the killing that calls for revenge cross party lines. Beside the long row of graves there was near-unanimous support for attacks on Israel.

Some question the value of the crude Qassam rockets that militants fire into Israel which, while disruptive and potentially deadly, cause little damage and invite massive Israeli retaliation, such as Wednesday’s fatal Israeli barrage.

“You will find no Palestinian against resistance. But to fire a rocket from among civilian houses, it doesn’t make any sense,” said Mohammed Yasji, 30, a Fatah security official.

But as pro-Qassam opponents tried to shout him down he added: “I support suicide bombings inside Israel. Let them feel how it is to have civilians die. Rockets do nothing. It doesn’t have the effect of a suicide bomb.”

Mustafa Sawwaf, a Gaza-based Palestinian analyst close to the Islamist movement, said: “I think there is a huge consideration to restart suicide bombings because this massacre was purely of civilians. Probably they will only resort to it to answer a massacre like Beit Hanoun. In physics there is a law that every action has a reaction.”

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