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GAZA CITY -- Thousands of Islamic fundamentalists chanting "revenge, revenge'' marched in Gaza City on Monday to protest a deadly blast at a secret bomb factory run by the Muslim militant group Hamas.
Hamas blamed Israel and Yasser Arafat's Palestinian authority for Sunday's explosion in which six people were killed, including Kamal Kahil, a senior commander of the Hamas military wing Izzedine al-Qassam.
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said Monday that he expected Hamas to respond with fresh attacks on Israel in order to recover from the setback of the weekend blast.
"It cannot be ruled out that in order to give a boost to their prestige, they will attempt attacks,'' Rabin said.
In a first show of force, Hamas brought some 10,000 supporters into the streets Monday for a memorial procession after Palestinian police refused to permit the burial of Kahil and the other victims in a public funeral and instead had them interred quietly.
The marchers fell in line behind five empty wooden stretchers that are normally used to carry bodies to the cemetery.
"Revenge, revenge,'' yelled some of the demonstrators. Others shouted, "Izzedine will reach its targets [inside Israel] despite the checkpoints'' and "We want to hear the Jews crying.''
Hamas, the leading opponent to the Israel-PLO autonomy accord, has killed scores of Israelis in a series of suicide bombings in attempts to sabotage the agreement.
Sunday's explosion gutted an apartment in Gaza City's Sheikh Radwan neighborhood. Six unexploded bombs, 150 grenades, a 10-kilogram rocket, two pistols and an Uzi submachine gun were recovered after the blast, Palestinian police said.
Palestinian police said the explosion was set off accidentally when Hamas members tried to put together a bomb.
Both Israel and the Palestinian authority denied Hamas allegations that they had conspired to set off the blast.
"Israel has nothing to do with the explosion in Gaza yesterday and the attempt ... to finger Israel as the responsible party is total nonsense,'' Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said.
"Instead of killing other people, those gentlemen killed themselves, and thank heaven they did not kill other people,'' he added.
Hisham Abdel-Razek, a senior activist in the PLO's main Fatah faction in Gaza, accused Izzedine al-Qassam of harming Palestinian interests by plotting attacks against Israel.
Abdel-Razek also criticized Palestinian intelligence agents, saying they should have discovered the bomb factory before the blast went off.
Israeli radio reports, meanwhile, said that a Gaza truck that was to have been used in a bombing attack in Israel last month was laden with explosives from the Sheik Radwan bomb factory. The truck, which carried about 100 kilograms of explosives, was discovered by police in time.
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