Fatah-Hamas tension mounts after clashes

Supporters of the mainstream Palestinian Fatah movement bring down Hamas flags in Gaza City yesterday. Tensions mounted yesterday between Fatah and Hamas following a night of protests and armed clashes in the wake of the radical Islamist faction's landslide election victory. PHOTO: AFP

The turmoil, which risks intensifying with further demonstrations planned for Saturday, came as the United States threatened to slash aid unless radical Hamas renounces violence

Thousands of supporters of Fatah, humiliated by a crushing defeat that has ended their decade-long dominance on power, demonstrated for the party leadership, including Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas, to resign.

Burnt debris still littered the streets around the parliament building in Gaza City on Saturday after one such protest, the fragments of torched tyres lying in the road.

Another rally was scheduled in Gaza City on Saturday to refuse any participation in the new administration, albeit as Hamas officials have vowed to appeal for Fatah members to join them in a national unity government.

Dozens of Fatah supporters closed off streets in the central Gaza Strip town of Deir al-Balah Saturday morning, burning tyres and calling for the resignation of the party's central committee, eyewitnesses said.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a splintered radical Fatah offshoot that has been responsible for dozens of deadly attacks, was to stage a separate rally in the troubled northern West Bank city of Nablus.

Around 200 masked gunmen from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades marched through the West Bank town of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, to protest against the Fatah party leadership over the election defeat.

Palestinian security forces are heavily infiltrated by Fatah elements, provoking fears that spiralling chaos in the territories can only disintegrate amid deteriorating relations between Fatah and Hamas militants.

Nine people, five of them security officers, were wounded in shootouts between Fatah and Hamas gunmen in the volatile southern Gaza Strip on Friday, the day after the official election results were published.

Hamas, which calls for the destruction of Israel and has waged scores of suicide attacks, is to be tasked with forming a government, throwing hopes of Middle East peace into turmoil and triggering widespread alarm in the West.

In the West Bank, a senior member of Fatah, Sakher Bssiso, told AFP that the revolutionary council had decided to implement an earlier decision to sack dozens of party members who ran as independents in Wednesday's election.