GAZA CITY: Tensions rose in the Gaza Strip on Friday after renewed clashes between the ruling Hamas movement and president Mahmud Abbas s Fatah party left five people dead in less than 24 hours. A Fatah loyalist, a Hamas member and a teenager were killed in the volatile coastal strip on Friday, while another two Hamas supporters died of wounds received in an attack the previous night, medics said. The clashes came after two weeks of relative calm in fighting between the rival factions, which had killed more than 30 people since mid-December. Nabil al-Jarjir, a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Fatah, was killed in the northern town of Jabaliya by personnel of a controversial interior ministry force loyal to Hamas. A Fatah spokesman, Maher Miqdad, accused force members of having executed Jarjir after surrounding his house. Hamas said Jarjir was killed in a shootout with the interior ministry force which had come to arrest him. Calling Jarjir one of the lackeys of the putschists, an allusion to Fatah leaders, the ruling party said he was the principal suspect in an attack on a jeep transporting interior ministry personnel in Jabaliya late Thursday. The attack wounded seven of the Hamas-run force and five bystanders. Two of the Hamas men wounded died in hospital Friday, medics said. Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya described the attack on the jeep as a regrettable crime. We are working seriously on throwing light on the incident and finding those responsible, said Haniya, who remains at the head of a beleaguered Hamas-led government amid a persistent deadlock in talks on forming a national unity administration acceptable to Western donors. Soon after Jarjir s death, a Hamas member, Raed Soboh, was killed and another wounded in Jabaliya when their car was fired on by armed men, medics said. Just before the shooting, the two men had been calling through a loudspeaker for people to come out to a Hamas rally later in the day, marking the anniversary of the Islamists upset parliamentary election victory over Fatah on Jan. 25, 2006. In the same neighbourhood, troops loyal to the Islamists encircled the house of another Al-Aqsa Brigades member, Mansur Shamayel, firing several rocket-propelled grenades at the building, witnesses said. A teenaged boy, 16-year-old Fadi Al-Khaldi, was killed by gunfire near the house, medics said. Meanwhile, nine members of Hamas and five memb ers of Fatah were kidnapped in tit-for-tat abductions in Gaza, security sources said. Deadly violence between Hamas and Fatah erupted on Dec. 16, after Abbas called for early elections to resolve a standoff with the ruling Islamists over forming a coalition cabinet. Hamas rejected the move as a coup attempt against its democratically elected government. Abbas is hoping that a unity government will lead the West to lift a debilitating aid freeze imposed on the Palestinian government after the Islamists formed a cabinet in March. The European Union and the United States, along with Israel, consider Hamas a terrorist organization and are demanding that the Islamists renounce violence and recognize Israel and past peace deals before they will resume the flow of aid. Hamas, however, has steadfastly refused to do so. Talks between the two factions resumed this week after Abbas met with Hamas s exiled political supremo Khaled Meshaal in Damascus. The latest round of the talks, due to take place on Friday, was postponed in the face of the renewed clashes. Haniya said Hamas was determined (to pursue) the dialogue despite the violence.
