RAFAH, May 19: A Hamas luminary was caught on Friday trying to smuggle hundreds of thousands of euros into Gaza, prompting a fresh showdown with Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas, who demanded a swift inquiry.

The incident, which pitted a prominent spokesman for Hamas against security officers loyal to the Palestinian Authority president at the Gaza-Egypt border, exacerbated already hefty tensions between the Islamists and Mr Abbas’s Fatah.

“Sami Abu Zuhri tried to cross with 639,000 euros (816,000 dollars) which has been confiscated by the Palestinian customs authorities,” said a spokesman for the EU observation force at the Rafah terminal, Julio de la Guardia.

A senior Palestinian official there said the Hamas spokesman was found with the money stashed inside a belt, coming back to Gaza from Egypt.

Mahmud Abbas, whose Fatah faction has been locked in a security showdown with Hamas that has elicited warnings of civil war, ordered an investigation into the incident and demanded to know where Abu Zuhri got the money.

“President Abbas ordered the attorney general to open an investigation and question Sami Abu Zurhi on where this money came from,” said a source in the office of the Palestinian Authority leader, who is currently abroad.

Abu Zuhri told reporters the money was bequests from Palestinian expatriates to help the cash-squeezed local populace, which has been suffocated by Western aid cuts since Hamas took office last March.

“I was bringing a sum of money which was donated by our people abroad for the Palestinian people, but unfortunately some people working at the crossing confiscated this money,” he told reporters.—AFP