GAZA CITY, Nov 9: Tens of thousands of Palestinians wept and screamed for revenge on Thursday as they buried 18 civilians killed in Gaza by Israeli shelling that Israel's prime minister blamed on a technical failure.

“Killers in Israel, you will never be able to defeat one Palestinian child,” said Abdul Hakim Awad, an official of President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement.Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, saying he was very distressed by the deaths of innocent people, said the carnage was the result of a “technical failure” by Israeli artillery.

An army spokeswoman said a targeting system fault was to blame and that artillery shelling in Gaza, suspended since the incident, would not be renewed until “all technical examinations are completed”. She did not say how long the checks would take.

Groups of militants, some masked and firing weapons in the air, flanked the procession as it snaked through the streets of Beit Hanoun, where Wednesday's attack took place, before the dead were laid to rest in a new cemetery.

The bodies, including seven children and four women, were each wrapped in a yellow flag, the symbol of the Fatah movement, and held aloft on stretchers among a vast crowd of tearful and angry mourners.

Cries of “Allahu Akbar” filled the air as the bodies were placed in their graves. The youngest was an 18-month-old girl laid in the ground by her weeping father.

Speaking at a business conference in Tel Aviv, Olmert reiterated his readiness to hold a summit with Abbas.—Reuters