GAZA CITY, Dec 18: Violence flared in Gaza on Monday despite a fragile truce between rival Palestinian factions, as president Mahmud Abbas, locked in a dangerous standoff with the ruling Hamas movement, vowed to press ahead with his controversial plans for early elections.

A member of Abbas's Fatah party was killed after gunmen fired on a welfare agency in northern Gaza in an attack that wounded five others, medics said.

Until the attack, a shaky late-night ceasefire appeared to be holding between the two rival groups battling for power in the volatile Palestinian territories, although sporadic gunfire rang out in the Gaza Strip.

Five Fatah members and four Hamas loyalists were kidnapped during the day in the north of the coastal strip, according to officials and witnesses.

Mr Abbas won support for his election plan from visiting Prime Minister Tony Blair, who appealed to the international community to back the moderate Palestinian president and called for an initiative to put the Middle East peace process back on track.

Mr Abbas described the situation in the territories as a “grave internal crisis” after an explosion of deadly violence at the weekend following his high-stakes political challenge to Hamas.

“I have called for early presidential and parliamentary elections so that the people can decide on the base of an acceptable programme to preserve their national interests... and put an end to the siege and crisis,” he said.

But he said the door was still open to forming a national unity government after Hamas vowed to boycott any elections, describing Mr Abbas's move as a coup and tantamount to a call for civil war.

Mr Abbas also appealed for an end to the street violence.

“It's not a question of who will win and who will lose. Any bullet shot anywhere is a loss for the Palestinian people and is not in our interest.” Mr Blair, standing alongside Mr Abbas at a Ramallah news conference, called for an initiative to support the Palestinians and move toward a two-state solution for the Middle East conflict.—AFP