GAZA CITY, 14 May 2007 — Four Palestinians were killed as deadly infighting erupted yesterday between Fatah and Hamas gunmen in Gaza City after a senior Fatah commander was shot dead. Two people died when loyalists of the two rival factions — since March united in a coalition government set up with the express aim of ending such fighting — exchanged fire near the presidential compound in Gaza City.
Nine other Palestinians were wounded in the brief rampage, in addition to the two who died in hospital. The identities of the dead were not immediately clear and at least one other person was in a critical condition. Medics said that most of those wounded on the coastal road, however, were members of Hamas, whose fighters were blamed earlier yesterday for the shooting of a local Fatah fighter in the northern Gaza Strip.
The shootings highlighted the tension still running high in the Gaza Strip since Fatah and Hamas signed a cease-fire and power-sharing deal last February.
The troubles began after Baha Abu Jarab, 32, who heads the Fatah-linked Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in his hometown of Beit Lahiya, and his 27-year-old driver Tawfiq Al-Bodi, were killed after masked gunmen opened fire.
Later in the day, gunmen attacked his funeral cortege in Jabaliya, wounding three mourners, a local security source said. Al-Aqsa and the Fatah political movement headed by President Mahmoud Abbas to which it is affiliated, blamed Hamas for the Beit Lahiya shootings and threatened to avenge their fighter’s death.
