THE youngest victim of the Arizona shootings has been laid to rest, a day after President Barack Obama hailed the nine-year-old girl as an inspiration to US politicians to heal their poisonous divisions.

Christina Taylor Green, who was among six people killed by a lone gunman in Tucson last Saturday, has become the heart-breaking public face of the attacks which unleashed a wave of soul-searching about America's political culture.

Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, 40, was left fighting for her life after the attack which also left another 13 people injured when a gunman opened fire at a public meeting outside a Tucson supermarket.

Giffords was reported to have made a "major leap forward" in her recovery on Thursday, opening her eyes spontaneously for up to 15 minutes and moving her legs and arms when asked, doctors said.

Christina was the youngest victim of the attack and hundreds of people lined the streets as her small coffin was carried into a local church for the service on Thursday.

"It was very good, very beautiful, her father was amazing, he said beautiful words. Uplifting her memory, remembering her, it's all it was about," said Jodie Kirk, who attended the church ceremony.

"She was ... just a normal kid, a joy to the world."

The funeral procession passed beneath a huge stars and stripes US flag recovered from the Twin Towers in New York City on September 11, 2001 - the day Christina was born.

At a poignant memorial service in Tucson on Wednesday, Obama said he hoped the schoolgirl was now hopping through "rain puddles in heaven" as he paid tribute to those killed and wounded in Saturday's shooting spree.

Obama, the father of two young daughters himself, appeared enthralled by the wonder young Christina was developing for American democracy at a time when partisan bickering has spawned widespread disgust.

"I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it," he told a 14,000-strong memorial service in the shocked Arisona desert town.

But the enduring memory of the speech was the little girl, now becoming the face of the tragedy.

Green's parents said she was drawn to politics because she was born on Septmber 11, and New York firefighters sent the huge flag rescued from the ashes of the Twin Towers to the funeral.

Supporters of the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church, a radical group which regularly mounts protests at funerals, had planned to demonstrate, but state legislators rapidly passed a law banning them from doing so.

A bikers' group turned out to protect mourners from any disturbance. "We are here to support the family, make sure that everything is safe," said Tina Childers of a Phoenix group.

Obama had hoped the schoolgirl's story would help heal a nation shocked by the killings and gripped by a toxic political climate many said was in part to blame for the shooting, allegedly carried out by a disturbed local 22-year-old.

His 35-minute eulogy won praise from across the country's political chasm.

It came after Republican star Sarah Palin accused the media of "blood libel" over commentators' remarks linking the Tucson attack to her conservative Tea Party movement.

The use of the term - which refers to a centuries-old slander that Jews use the blood of Christian children in religious ceremonies - offended Democrats and some Jewish groups, who noted that Giffords was Jewish.

First Lady Michelle Obama meanwhile urged parents to teach their children tolerance in response to the deadly Tucson shooting spree.

Children are struggling to make sense of the killings, she said. "We can teach them the value of tolerance - the practice of assuming the best, rather than the worst, about those around us," she wrote in an open letter to parents.

