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GAZA, July 26: Palestinian Hamas security forces in the Gaza Strip arrested 160 men aligned with the rival Fatah faction on Saturday, after an explosion there killed five Hamas gunmen and a girl, Fatah officials said.
Friday’s blast next to a car used by men from the armed wing of Gaza’s ruling Hamas group killed the girl and three militants. Two others died of their wounds in hospital, Hamas and medical officials said.
The blast, the third of its kind in a day, marked one of the biggest flare-ups in internal Gaza violence since Hamas routed the forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s more secular Fatah faction to seize control of the territory a year ago.
Abbas, finding his authority limited to the occupied West Bank, split with Hamas and revived peace efforts with Israel. He recently sought reconciliation with his Islamist rivals but they have balked at his precondition that they give up Gaza.
Hamas blamed Fatah for Friday night’s blast at a major junction outside Gaza City.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh convened an emergency cabinet meeting and in a statement afterwards ministers said the bombing was “proof that Fatah is not interested in resuming any dialogue.”
Fatah officials in Ramallah said Fatah had no link to the violence and blamed it on Hamas infighting, while a statement from Abbas’s office said: “The claim that Fatah carried out these explosions aims to cover up the fact that there are disputes within Hamas.”
“REVENGE, REVENGE”: A group called the “Al-Awda Brigades”, which said it is aligned with Fatah, claimed responsibility for the attack. The authenticity of the claim could not be verified.
Thousands turned out for the funerals of the six victims of Friday’s attack, some chanting “Revenge, revenge” as shots were fired into the air.
Senior Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya, whose nephew was killed in the blast and whose oldest son was wounded, vowed to punish those responsible.
“Those who did this must be hanged in a public square and must be fired upon,” Hayya said before the burials.
Hamas security forces stormed some 40 offices of Fatah officials throughout the Gaza Strip, confiscating documents and computers. Both Fatah and a Palestinian human rights watchdog put the number of detainees at 160.
Among those held was a Palestinian said to have worked as a cameraman for a German television station. But a Palestinian security source said the man, Sawah Abu Saif, was arrested as a suspected Fatah activist and not for being a journalist.
The factional violence has eclipsed Israeli-Palestinian fighting in Gaza, where an Egyptian-brokered truce has largely held since last month despite some violations on both sides. —Reuters
