GAZA CITY, March 31: Deadly clashes erupted in Gaza on Friday between militants and supporters of moderate Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas after their military leader was slain in a bombing they blamed on Mr Abbas’s security chiefs in collusion with Israel.

Mr Abbas’s spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina issued an appeal on the official Wafa news agency ‘for calm and for gunmen to withdraw from the street’ while the new government led by Hamas held an emergency meeting, the prime minister’s office said.

Three Palestinians were killed and 25 wounded in the fighting between supporters of Mr Abbas’s mainstream Fatah movement and militants of the Popular Resistance Committees, whose commander Abu Yussef al Gouga was killed.

Seven of the wounded from the latest clashes were in a serious condition, hospital sources said.

It was the second firefight in a matter of hours between the rival supporters. Two children had been hit by stray bullets after unidentified gunmen tried to kidnap another leader of the Popular Resistance Committees.

The group’s spokesman, Abu Abir, who was addressing journalists at the time of the earlier clashes, had accused Palestinian security chiefs loyal to Mr Abbas of being behind the killing in collusion with Israel.—AFP