June 12, 2007	Tuesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 26, 1428

GAZA CITY, June 11: Gunmen fired at the house of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas early on Monday and warring factions threw militants to deaths from high-rise buildings, in a dangerous escalation of infighting in Gaza.

There were no reports of casualties in the attack on Haniyeh’s house in the Shati refugee camp next to Gaza City. His office wouldn’t say whether he was inside when the house and surrounding area came under heavy fire for about 15 minutes from a nearby high-rise building. But his wife, children and grandchildren were present, his family said.

Rival gunmen exchanged fire at two Gaza hospitals, and Cabinet ministers fled their weekly meeting after the government headquarters was hit in crossfire on Monday, in the latest round in an increasingly brutal power struggle between Hamas and Fatah.

In all, eight Palestinians were killed on Monday, including three shot dead in Beit Hanoun Hospital in northern Gaza. At Gaza’s largest hospital, Shifa in Gaza City, combatants fired mortars, grenades and assault rifles.

The battles came a day after two men were thrown to their deaths from high-rise rooftops, signaling a rapid descent into all-out confrontation.

It was the first time in a month of fighting between Hamas and the rival Fatah group that Haniyeh was an apparent target.

Before daybreak on Monday the sides reached an agreement to stop the clashes, and Fatah-linked security forces began pulling back from points of friction around the Gaza Strip. But several such cease-fires in recent weeks have been short-lived. Shooting could still be heard at several points around Gaza City as residents awoke on Monday.

The fighting took a grisly turn on Sunday, when Hamas militants kidnapped a member of the elite presidential guard of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, took him to the roof of a 15-story apartment building and threw him to his death.

That set off skirmishes throughout the city, including gun battles and shelling. Fatah militants surrounded the house of a Hamas mosque preacher, fired rocket-propelled grenades at the four-story building and then entered, firing at the preacher, and taking him away. Later, his body was brought to a hospital. Hamas pledged revenge.

And just before midnight, a Hamas activist was thrown off the 12th floor of a building and killed, security officials said. Four other Hamas men in the building were shot and wounded, bringing the day’s toll to three dead and 36 wounded, medical officials said.

A Hamas militant wounded on Friday in southern Gaza infighting also died on Sunday.

The two sides have been locked in a violent power struggle since Hamas ousted Fatah from power in January 2006 elections. Hamas brought Fatah into its government in March in an effort to quell the internal strife, but the fighting reignited in mid-May over an unresolved dispute over who controls the powerful security forces.—AP