Thousands of Palestinians converged on a Jerusalem cemetery yesterday for the funeral of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir, who was murdered on Wednesday.

The boy’s body was finally released by the Israeli occupying power after a post-mortem that began on Thursday.

An ambulance carried the body, wrapped in a Palestinian flag and traditional headscarf, to a mosque in the neighbourhood where he lived, before mourners carried the open casket through the crowd to the cemetery.

Throughout the ceremony there were constant clashes with Israeli security forces who had beefed up their presence in the area.

Israeli police fired stun grenades at stone-throwing young Palestinians in Ras al-Amud and Wadi Joz in the eastern sector of the city, which has been rocked by violent protests since his burned body was found after he was seized near his home in the east Jerusalem area of Shuafat.

The authorities have failed to turn up any evidence as to who abducted the boy, stabbed him several times and set fire to his body where it was dumped in a woodland beauty spot in the west of the city.

Palestinians say that Mohammed was killed by Israeli extremists in a suspected revenge attack for the earlier murder of three young Israelis on the occupied West Bank.

Israeli police said that an investigation was ongoing and the motive has yet to be determined.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had led calls for revenge when the bodies of the three Israeli teenagers were discovered, said: “We don’t know yet the motives or the identities of the perpetrators, but we will.

“We will bring to justice the criminals responsible for this despicable crime whoever they may be.

“Murder, riots, incitement, vigilantism — they have no place in our democracy.”

Palestinian militants fired at least six rockets and mortar shells toward Israel, but that was a sharp decline from recent weeks.

No Israeli air strikes were reported on the day after the Israeli military rushed additional forces to its southern border with the Gaza Strip because of intensifying tension.

Israeli military spokesman Lt Col Peter Lerner announced the reinforcements on Thursday, but he insisted that the move was “defensive.”