Mourners flooded the streets of Gaza Friday, as they carried the shrouded bodies of 21 people, including at least eight children, killed in a fire in an apartment block where residents had planned to celebrate the homecoming of a relative.
Most of the dead were members of the Abu Rayya family, their bodies were wrapped in Palestinian flags and brought into a mosque for prayers before being buried at the Cemetery of Martyrs east of the Jabalia refugee camp.
The Islamist Hamas group, which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007, gave the victims a military funeral.
It took firefighters more than an hour to get control of the massive flames that burst through the top floor of a four-story residential building in Jabalia.
Jabalia is one of eight refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, where 2.3 million people live in one of the most densely populated areas on earth. (Reuters)
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