GAZA CITY, Sept 3: Hamas police dragged doctors back to work and closed private clinics on Wednesday in a bid to break a medical strike that has nearly brought the Gaza Strip’s fragile health sector to a halt.

“We are taking steps to break the strike,” said Khaled Radi, a spokesman for Gaza’s health ministry which has been run by Hamas since the Islamist movement seized power in June 2007 after a week of bloody street battles.

“We have appointed new doctors, nurses, and health workers in some areas, and there will be various punishments for those who participate in this politically motivated strike,” he told AFP.

Doctors and other medical workers went on strike late last week to protest against the firing of 46 health ministry employees, all of whom were linked to secular Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party.

Those working in emergency services, along with health workers loyal to Hamas, did not join the strike.

The striking doctors accuse Hamas of making a spoils system out of the fragile health sector in the impoverished territory of 1.5 million people which has been under a crippling Israeli blockade since the Islamists took power.

Hamas has in turn accused the doctors’ union in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Abbas still rules, of calling the strike to challenge its power, and says three people including two children have died as a result.

A doctor in the town of Khan Yunis who is participating in the strike said Hamas-run police came to his house and forcibly took to the hospital.—AFP