GAZA CITY, June 7: A Palestinian security officer was killed on Thursday in the first deadly clashes between rival Fatah and Hamas gunmen to scar the Gaza Strip since a truce began nearly three weeks ago.

Another 17 Palestinians were wounded in the violence that erupted west of Rafah, in the southern part of the increasingly impoverished and radicalised Gaza Strip, before spreading downtown, medical sources and witnesses said.

The dead man was named as Wael Wahbeh, a security officer and activist in the secular Fatah movement headed by president Mahmud Abbas, which has been locked in periodic factional fighting with loyalists of Islamist rivals Hamas.

The clashes later subsided and both sides agreed with Egyptian mediators and the Islamic Jihad faction to pull armed men from the streets and open an inquiry into who was responsible for the infraction, security sources said.

The fighting came two days after Abbas warned in a speech marking the 40th anniversary of Israeli occupation of land conquered in the 1967 war that recent violence had left the Palestinians “on the verge of a civil war.”--AFP