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GAZA CITY : Hamas and Islamic Jihad on Saturday vowed revenge on Israel after eight Palestinians, including a senior military commander and family members, were killed in an explosion in the Gaza Strip.
The bloodshed came hours before French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner began a visit to the region, calling for Israel to end its punishing blockade on Gaza.
In the Hamas-run territory, anger boiled over as thousands of mourners attended the funeral of the eight Palestinians killed late Friday in the teeming Bureij refugee camp south of Gaza City.
The dead included Ayman al-Fayed, 43, a senior militant in Islamic Jihad's armed wing the Al-Quds Brigades, his 37-year-old wife and three of their children aged 21, 19 and six, the Palestinian health ministry said.
Three other people were also killed while 42 others, including 17 children, were wounded.
Palestinian medics and witnesses said the blast was caused by a missile fired at the Fayed home during an air raid, but the Israeli military denied all involvement.
"We condemn the Israeli crime perpetrated against the Bureij refugee camp," said Sami Abu Zuhri, spokesman for the Islamist Hamas movement that has ruled the Gaza Strip since June.
"Israel bears full responsibility and will also suffer the consequences," he told reporters. "The occupation (Israel) will pay a huge price for this crime."
The Israeli army insisted it was not involved.
"We did not undertake any operations on Friday against the Gaza Strip," a military spokeswoman told AFP.
The radical Islamic Jihad was adamant.
"The enemy is trying to deny responsibility for this crime, but it alone is responsible and all of its denials will change nothing," the group said in a statement.
The Fayed house was completely destroyed in the blast, while 10 others were damaged in the Bureij, the most populous of eight refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, witnesses and an AFP correspondent said.
Emergency services searched overnight through the rubble for people buried under the debris as hundreds of Palestinians, demanding revenge, gathered outside Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital south of Gaza City.
Israel has kept Gaza under effective lockdown since Hamas violently seized control of the territory, and on January 17 it tightened the blockade in response to rocket attacks by Palestinian militants.
Kouchner, who is due to meet Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas later Saturday and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday, urged the Jewish state to lift the Gaza blockade.
"The economic and humanitarian situation in Gaza is especially bad. The blockade directly affects the entire economy and living conditions as well," Kouchner said in an interview published on Saturday with Al-Quds newspaper.
"We call for the Gaza blockade to be lifted -- there must be free movement of both people and goods," Kouchner said.
He also called on Olmert and Abbas to respect their commitments agreed at the relaunch of Middle East peace talks in the United States last November.
Israel must freeze settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which are "an obstacle to peace," Kouchner said, while the Palestinians must "fight against terrorist movements and reform the security services."
At least 180 people, mostly Gaza militants, have been killed since the November revival of the peace process, according to an AFP count.
The latest deaths brought to 6,141 the total number of people killed since the eruption of the Palestinian uprising in 2000, most of them Palestinians, according to an AFP tally.
- AFP /ls
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