18 November 2010 - 20:30

An Islamist group on Thursday posted a Hebrew-language threat on the Internet, pledging revenge for the killing of two militants in an Israeli air strike on Gaza City a day earlier.

(AhlulBayt News Agency) - The 30-second clip, in which a man speaks in heavily-accented Hebrew, was posted on an Islamist website which contains references to Gaza.

"Our letter is to the Jewish attackers that the killing of our brothers will not stop us from the continuation of jihad," it said, naming the two militants killed when an Israeli missile slammed into their car in Gaza City on Wednesday.

The strike, for which the Israeli military claimed responsibility, killed Islam Yassin, 39, and his brother Mohammed, 20, both members of the Army of Islam, a radical group with an ideology similar to Al-Qaeda.

"You won't have any security calm and our rockets will continue, God willing, if you won't leave the land of Palestine and you will know that your citizens ... are not safe from our members."

At the end of the clip, the speaker identifies himself as belonging to "Ansar al-Sunna in Al-Quds" -- in what appeared to be a reference to a Gaza-based Salafist group which models itself on Al-Qaeda.

Many Palestinians speak Hebrew, and although militant groups often put out fiery statements vowing revenge and occasionally recordings, an audio clip in Hebrew is extremely unusual.

In northern Gaza on Thursday, mourners attended the militants' funeral, with around 200 people walking silently through the streets of Jabaliya in a procession where calls for vengeance were noticeably absent, an AFP correspondent said.

The Israeli military said two mortar shells were fired from Gaza into southern Israel without causing casualties or damage. The Popular Resistance Committees, a small armed group based in the Strip, claimed the attack.

Salafist Muslims practise a strict version of Islam in which they say they strive to live as the Prophet Mohammed did in the 7th century.

In Gaza, the term is applied to hardline Islamist militant groups, some of which have openly challenged the territory's Hamas rulers and model themselves on Al-Qaeda.

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