RAMALLAH (West Bank), June 17: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas swore in an emergency government on Sunday in a move that could bolster him in his power struggle with Hamas rivals by ending a US-led aid embargo.

The 13-member cabinet, including an ex-guerrilla chief as interior minister, replaces a short-lived unity government Abbas dismissed after Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip.

“Security of the citizen is the priority on the basis of the sovereignty of the law,” Salam Fayyad, the Western-trained economist who becomes prime minister, told Palestinians in a televised address.

Abbas aides said he had issued decrees bypassing constitutional limits on his powers to establish the emergency government and keep it in place without the approval of the Palestinian parliament, which has a Hamas majority.

Abbas also issued bans on Hamas’s armed institutions, while Fayyad froze government accounts to prevent Hamas’s dismissed ministers from gaining access to funds — although Washington had already taken similar steps on international accounts.

Hamas denounced the new cabinet as a “coup” mechanism.

Separately, two Katyusha rockets hit the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona near the border with Lebanon.—Reuters