Tens of thousands of mourners joined in an outpouring of national grief on Tuesday at the burial of three Israeli teenagers whose kidnapping and killing Israel blamed on the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.
President Shimon Peres, a usually dovish elder statesman, echoed official vows to punish Hamas in his eulogy in the cemetery in the centre of the country.
"I know that the murderers will be found. Israel will act with a heavy hand until terror is uprooted," he said at the ceremony in Modi'in, a town between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Israel bombed dozens of sites in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, wounding two Palestinians, striking at Hamas a day after finding the bodies of three teenagers in the occupied West Bank, not far from where they went missing while hitchhiking on June 12.
But officials said Israel's security cabinet, which held an emergency session late on Monday and was due to meet again on Tuesday, was split on the scope of any further action in the coastal enclave or in the West Bank. The United States and regional power-broker Egypt urged restraint.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who attended the burial, has promised that Hamas would pay.
Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon, speaking outside the home of one of the teens, said: "Hamas's leaders and members should know that the blood of whoever dares strike at the citizens of Israel is forfeit. They should know that we will pursue them wherever they are and hit them hard."
Just before the funeral, a recording of a furtive cellphone call one of the abducted teens made to a police emergency number was broadcast on Israeli television stations.
"They've kidnapped me," the youngster said. Shouted orders in Arabic-accented Hebrew - "head down, head down", and the sound of what appeared to be muffled gunfire followed before the call ended.
Gaza attacks
The military said aircraft attacked 34 targets in Gaza, mostly belonging to Hamas, but did not link the strikes to the abductions. The military cited 18 Palestinian rockets launched against Israel from Gaza in the past two days.
Palestinian medics said two people were slightly wounded.
The Islamist group has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the disappearance of the students nor in the cross-border rocket salvoes from Gaza.
Before their joint burial in the Israeli city of Modi'in, funeral services were held outside the homes of Gil-Ad Shaer and U.S.-Israeli national Naftali Fraenkel, both 16, and Eyal Yifrah, 19.
"There hasn't been a show of unity like this in Israel for years," Fraenkel's father, Avraham, said at the service as he stood facing the body of his son, which was draped in an Israeli flag.
Israeli television and radio stations interrupted regular programming to broadcast the funeral, which began more than an hour late as large crowds streamed into the cemetery.
"This shows unity among the people, but unfortunately it only happens in times of sorrow," said one mourner, Shalom Balas, 47, a lawyer from Modi'in.
UN rights office urges restraint
The United Nations human rights office urged on Tuesday all Israelis and Palestinians to exercise "maximum restraint" after the bodies of three Israeli boys were found near the West Bank city of Hebron.
"We urge all parties to refrain from punishing individuals for offences they have not personally committed or by imposing collective penalties," U.N. human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told a news briefing in Geneva.
REUTERS
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