Tens of thousands of grieving Gazans, weeping in anguish and screaming for revenge, crammed into a cemetery today to bury 18 civilians killed by an errant Israeli artillery barrage that tore through a crowded residential neighbourhood.

Eighteen ambulances, flanked by Palestinian police cars, began the slow procession from hospital morgues in northern Gaza to the cemetery where 18 victims of an Israeli artillery attack were to be buried today.