"From our soul, from our blood, we will die for you our martyrs!" chanted mourners as they weaved their way through the streets of Beit Hanun, where the civilians were killed in early morning Israeli artillery shelling the day before.
"Revenge, revenge, oh martyrs! Oh, our beloved, the response will be in Tel Aviv," they vowed, waving flags of all the Palestinian factions and occasionally setting off bursts of automatic gunfire into the air.
The funeral procession stretched for hundreds of metres as mourners collected the bodies of those killed at two separate morgues and then made their way to the new wing of the town's cemetery where the victims were buried, named "The Martyrs of the Beit Hanun Massacre."
The freshly dug graves stood in a single row, each marked by a concrete block. A Palestinian flag fluttered over each one. Two Israeli unmanned aircraft buzzed overhead.
All of the dead belonged to the al-Athamnas, a prominent family in town that includes several doctors and professionals. Family members said they had fled during the recent Israeli offensive, returning home after Tuesday's pullout.
Following the Beit Hanun deaths, militants vowed to unleash suicide bombings inside Israel, nearly two years after factions agreed to abide by an informal truce in such attacks.
Police throughout Israel were placed on a heightened state of alert following the threats.
Militants in the Gaza Strip continued to fire homemade rockets into Israeli territory, in the aftermath of the strike, and three Israeli civilians were lightly wounded when one struck the centre of the southern town of Sderot.
"This massacre will push us to avenge ourselves and continue our resistance," Mohammed Nishuane, 23, said as he marched toward the cemetery through the town which is still bearing the scars of a week-long Israeli offensive on Palestinian militants.
"This town has known many black days and this is just one more, perhaps the blackest of them all," said Tayseer al-Masry, a 36-year-old pharmacist who also took part in the procession.
Strike condemned
The Beit Hanun strike was condemned worldwide and prompted moderate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas to accuse Israel of sinking chances of peace and to declare a three-day mourning period in the territories.
The international community called on Israel to immediately halt its operations in the coastal strip, which has left more than 300 Palestinians dead since late June when an Israeli soldier was kidnapped by militants.
Israeli officials offered regret following the strike, which the army said had targeted militants firing rockets into Israel and offered humanitarian assistance to the dozens of people wounded in the fire.
Speaking to the UN Security Council, Israel's deputy UN representative Daniel Carmon reiterated his country's "deep sorrow and regret" over the accidental killing of innocent civilians.
But he told the council that "terrorism" by the ruling Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement was to blame for the Beit Hanun incident.
And while a halt was ordered to all artillery fire in the coastal strip pending an inquiry, officials said the four-month operation against militants would go on. Two gunmen were killed in an air raid late Wednesday in eastern Gaza City.
"The military will continue as long as there will be Qassam shooting," he said, using the name for Hamas' homemade rockets. "We are not going to stop." Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said.
"We will take precautions in order to avoid unnecessary mistakes," he said. "We will do everything in our power to avoid it. I think it would not be serious to promise that it may not happen. It may happen."
UN meeting
The UN Security Council will hold a meeting in New York to discuss the mounting bloodshed in the Gaza Strip.
The meeting was announced as Qatar, the lone Arab member of the 15-member council, circulated a draft resolution condemning the Israeli "massacre" of Palestinians in Beit Hanun.
Arab foreign ministers, meanwhile, are to hold a special meeting in Cairo on the weekend to discuss the violence in the Gaza Strip.
Ministers from Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal and Yemen will gather along with Palestinian representatives on November 18, the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference said.
Mr Abbas requested the meeting in a telephone conversation with OIC secretary general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the bloc added.
Mr Ihsangolu has been increasingly critical of Israel's Operation Autumn Clouds offensive, last week he spoke of the "need for immediate intervention by the international community to stop Israeli crimes which represent a dangerous violation of the Geneva convention."