JABALIYA REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip, 3 November 2005 — Hamas vowed yesterday to call off an informal truce at the year-end, as thousands rallied at the funerals of two Palestinian commando leaders killed in an Israeli air raid. Bloodshed also gripped the northern West Bank where Israeli troops shot dead a member of the radical Palestinian group Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades just hours after militants had killed an Israeli soldier in the same area. “The quiet will finish at the end of this year,” spokesman Mushir Al-Masri said at the funerals in Gaza’s impoverished Jabaliya refugee camp.

He said the groups that signed up to the informal truce in Cairo last March agreed at the time to review the situation ahead of 2006. “No one should dream there will be another quiet,” when faced with escalating violence from Israel, Masri warned.

Hamas, the most powerful movement in Gaza, warned Tuesday that Israel had “started a war” by killing a local leader of its military wing along with an Al-Aqsa commander.

Palestinian gunmen yesterday shot dead an Israeli soldier near the West Bank town of Jenin in a shooting claimed by Hamas’ armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades.

Later, an Al-Aqsa gunman was shot dead during a gunbattle with Israeli troops in the nearby town of Qabatiya, Palestinian medics said. Rafat Assus, 22, was critically wounded and died in hospital.

And an Israeli was lightly wounded when two rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip onto the town of Netiv ha-Asara, on Israel’s northern border with Gaza, the army said.

Around 15,000 people attended the Gaza funerals amid shouts of “revenge, revenge” and “answer in Tel Aviv,” all punctuated by burst of gunfire.

Hundreds paraded mortar rounds, Kalashnikovs and grenades in the streets, as the victims’ wives and children sobbed.

Qaraa is the first Hamas member to be killed since a flare-up which kicked off last Wednesday following an Islamic Jihad suicide bombing in northern Israel that killed five Israelis. Until Tuesday’s airstrike, Hamas had remained largely silent.

Overnight, Gaza militants fired a Qassam rocket and a mortar into Israel. Israeli sources said the two men killed Tuesday were responsible for a string of attacks that killed 20 Israelis.