GAZA CITY, May 21: The head of the security services became the latest bomb target of increasingly vicious factional violence on Sunday, prompting a vow by Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas to avoid a descent into civil war.
Rashid Abu Shbak escaped unharmed when a 70-kilogramme device was discovered on the road outside his home in the south of Gaza City shortly before he had been due to drive to his office.
Abu Shbak is one of the most powerful figures in Palestinian Authority president Abbas’s Fatah movement and was only named to his newly created post of director of internal security last month — an appointment hotly contested by the Hamas government.
The apparent assassination attempt came just a day after Tareq Abu Rajab, head of the intelligence services, was seriously wounded and his bodyguard killed in a blast in Gaza.
Sources close to Abu Shbak said the remote-controlled device had been found on the side of the road during a routine sweep.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility by any of the militant factions in the territory, which has become increasingly anarchic since the departure of Israeli troops nearly a year ago.
The targeting of Abu Shbak and Abu Rajab further fuelled projections the Palestinians are heading for a civil war, something Abbas said he would never allow.
“Civil war is a red line which no one would dare to cross,” he said after meeting Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni at a conference in Egypt.
“Skirmishes take place, but a civil war is forbidden,” he said.
Even though Hamas thrashed Fatah in January’s parliamentary elections and subsequently formed its first government, responsibility for the security forces remains in the hands of Abbas in his role as president.
Hamas has become resentful of the conduct of the security forces which are stuffed with Fatah followers and have made no progress in tackling the security chaos in Gaza.
While Abbas was in Europe last week, Hamas seized its opportunity to roll out thousands of members of a volunteer paramilitary force which had been explicitly vetoed by the president.
Fatah responded by beefing up its own security forces—AFP
GAZA CITY, May 21: The head of the security services became the latest bomb target of increasingly vicious factional violence on Sunday, prompting a vow by Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas to avoid a descent into civil war.
