Fatah gunmen torch Hamas offices

Members of Abbas's Fatah movement set fire to two Hamas offices in the towns of Salfit and Qalqilya in the West Bank, witnesses said. Fatah gunmen also fired at a facility belonging to Hamas in the city of Nablus.

Nobody was hurt in the incidents overnight, which followed an arson attack by Fatah gunmen on Haniyeh's office at the Palestinian parliamentary building in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday evening.

Hamas and Abbas have been locked in an intensifying power struggle since the Islamists took control of the government in March after trouncing Fatah in parliamentary elections.

Tension has exploded repeatedly in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas has its main powerbase, and gun battles have killed at least 20 Palestinians.

The violence has spilled into the West Bank, Fatah's stronghold, in the form of a series of arson and shooting attacks against Hamas offices. Fatah called it revenge for a Hamas assault on a security headquarters in Gaza.

"They (Hamas) will see," a gunmen, who declined to give his name, said between firing volleys of shots into the air outside Haniyeh's Ramallah office.

"We will target them here in the West Bank if they keep targeting Fatah and our security services in Gaza," he said.

In the Monday night attack on the parliament building in Ramallah, gunmen set fire to Haniyeh's office, tossed furniture out of windows and fired shots inside the complex.

It was a symbolic attack on Haniyeh, who is unable to visit Ramallah due to Israeli travel bans and so holds court in Gaza.

Tension has been inflamed by a referendum that Abbas has called for July 26 on his vision of a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel.

Hamas, which seeks to destroy the Jewish state, has labelled the referendum a coup attempt.

Support for Abbas's position in the referendum has dropped steeply in recent days, with 61 percent of Palestinians saying they will support a two-state plan in the July vote compared with 77 percent a week ago, a Palestinian survey found.

Abbas and Haniyeh were expected to meet on Tuesday evening to attempt to resolve their disagreements over the referendum.