Hamas vows 'volcano of revenge' for leader's death

HAMAS threatened a "volcano of revenge" against Israel yesterday as some 200,000 Palestinians packed the streets of Gaza for the funeral of the Islamic movement's assassinated leader Abdelaziz Rantissi.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, Spain's new Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez said he has ordered his country's 1,300 troops out of Iraq on a weekend which saw 10 US Marines killed.

Rantissi was killed late on Saturday when an Israeli helicopter fired rockets into his car in Gaza City, less than a month after Hamas's spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was killed in a similar attack.

Fearing that Rantissi's successor as head of the movement in the occupied territories could also be targeted by Israel, Hamas announced it had chosen a new leader but his identity would not be disclosed for security reasons.

The killing sparked a chorus of international condemnation, led by Pope John Paul II, UN secretary-general Kofi Annan and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, with the exception of the United States, which said Israel "has the right to defend itself".

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed that the targeting of "the leaders of terrorist organisations" would continue, while one of his ministers warned that Hamas's Damascus-based politburo chief Khaled Meshaal, now the movement's number one, would meet "an identical fate".

A crowd of some 200,000 Palestinians took to the streets as Rantissi's coffin left Gaza City's Shifa hospital, before stopping at his family home and then being transported to the main Al-Omri mosque.

"When the opportunity presents itself, we will deliver a widescale response. It will come," top Hamas figure Mahmud al-Zahar told mourners.