GAZA, June 14: Hamas fighters hunted down key loyalists of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in the Gaza Strip on Thursday after seizing most of the final strongholds of his secular Fatah movement in the enclave.
After six days of fighting that have killed over 100 people and ripped apart Palestinians’ hopes for a state, President Abbas dismissed the Hamas-led government and declared a state of emergency.
He held out the prospect of early elections but it was gun law not the constitution that held sway in Gaza.
Hamas militants ‘executed’ a top Fatah ‘collaborator’ and paraded his body through the streets and leaders issued a death list of other Fatah supporters. They dismissed the decrees issued in the Fatah-controlled West Bank and said Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas remained in charge in their enclave.
Jubilant young Hamas gunmen hoisted green flags over captured Fatah buildings and pounded the remaining Fatah bastion, Abbas’s own Gaza compound, with heavy weaponry.
The White House accused them of ‘acts of terror’ and US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Mr Abbas to emphasise support for Palestinian ‘moderates’, but admitted that finding troops for any international force for Gaza would be tough.
In the West Bank, Mr Abbas signed decrees dismissing a three-month-old unity government formed with Hamas and declaring a state of emergency. But violence overtook any legal moves.
At least 29 more people were killed in Gaza, hospital staff said, including 18 Fatah men found in the headquarters of Abbas’s Preventive Security force.—Residents
GAZA, June 14: Hamas fighters hunted down key loyalists of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in the Gaza Strip on Thursday after seizing most of the final strongholds of his secular Fatah movement in the enclave.
