A young Palestinian prodded the reddish paste in the sand with a stick and said: "This is where they killed Yasser Abu Namous". He pointed a few metres away, to where beads of coagulated blood sat like oil on the road. "That's Fadl Mohamed Abu Obeid."
Twelve hours earlier, Abu Namous and Abu Obeid ran down the road towards Khan Yunis refugee camp in terror, pursued by an Israeli helicopter gunship that killed them both with a single missile.
The Israeli army claimed the four men in their early 20s cut down by helicopter-fired missiles early yesterday had repeatedly made mortar attacks against the neighbouring Neve Dekalim settlement, on occupied land in the Gaza Strip. Twenty-eight other people were wounded in the raid, three of them critically.
Khan Yunis cemetery lies between the housing estate and the Israelis. A Merkava tank observed the funerals of Gaza's four newest "martyrs" from the high ground.
More than a dozen witnesses claimed no mortars were fired by the Palestinians during the night of Tuesday to Wednesday. Residents saw a drone, which takes reconnaissance pictures, on Tuesday afternoon, about seven hours before the helicopter attack. For that reason, they believe the Israeli operation was premeditated.
About 11.30 p.m., some children blew up a home-made pipe bomb in the cemetery - too far from the Israelis to endanger them. The Israelis then fired heavy machine guns and tank shells into the cemetery. About 10 young men from the "Martyr Ahmad Abu al-Arish Brigade" - a militia loyal to Yasser Arafat's party Fatah - had gathered in the road north of the cemetery.
"The cemetery is a spotting post for us," a survivor of the attack explained at the funeral. "We use it to watch the Israeli position, and to ambush them when they make incursions into our neighbourhood. We didn't fire anything at them last night."
Two helicopters arrived minutes after the Israeli machine gun and tank fire. The first missile killed Abu Namous and Abu Obeid. The second blew a hole in the cemetery wall. At the north-eastern corner of the cemetery, in the Zoerab neighbourhood, the third and fourth missiles killed Said and Sayyid Abu Sitta, cousins who were active Abu Arish fighters.
Five thousand mourners dispersed quietly, many of them weeping for the four young men. At the same time, hundreds of small boys scurried up the hill on the far side of the cemetery, towards the Israeli tank. All afternoon, the children pelted the tank with stones.
