Scores of masked men fought a running gun battle in Gaza City on Wednesday, rattling a new ceasefire drawn up to try to stop a Palestinian power struggle spinning dangerously out of control.
Two loyalists from the Fatah faction of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were killed in a four-hour fight with men from the ruling Hamas movement only hours after the truce took effect, medics said.
The fighting turned a street in southern Gaza City into a veritable battlefield, with about 100 masked gunmen firing automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades at each other, witnesses said.
Tension continued to reign in Gaza City, with armed men, some of them hooded, patrolling the streets and security beefed up around Abbas’s office — the scene of heavy combat earlier in the week.
Sporadic bursts of gunfire were shot into the air by mourners as they attended the funerals of the two Fatah members.
But in the centre of the city, shops opened and residents carried on with their daily routine after four days of internecine violence that has left 13 people dead and dozens wounded.
After appealing for calm, both Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniya of Hamas announced a new ceasefire on Tuesday.
”From 11pm [local time], there will be a return to complete calm that will allow us to return to our business and to take care of our people,” Abbas told journalists.
The agreement ”will be applied in Gaza to put an end to the armed presence, to shooting and to chaotic military deployments”.
A previous ceasefire between the factions agreed late on Sunday held for barely 24 hours, with six people killed in factional fighting in Gaza on Tuesday alone.
Abbas said the new truce had been hammered out after contacts with ”friendly countries and friendly leaders”, such as Jordan’s King Abdullah II.
Officials in Amman had announced earlier that the king had phoned Abbas and offered to host a meeting between him and the Hamas premier to defuse the crisis.
Abbas said he was prepared to ”respond favourably” to the invitation.
The deadly clashes, which have raised fears of an outbreak of civil war, erupted after Abbas announced on Saturday his intention to call early presidential and parliamentary elections as a way to resolve a months-long stand-off with the ruling Islamists.
In a televised address late on Tuesday, Haniya once again rejected the election plan despite backing the ceasefire.
”This call is unconstitutional and risks throwing us 10 years back. We do not accept, we reject this call and insist on the necessity to respect the choice of the Palestinian people,” he said.
Haniya’s government has been boycotted by Israel and the West since it took office in March after a shock election win over Abbas’s long-dominant Fatah, plunging the Palestinian territories into their worst-ever financial crisis.
Haniya said his movement was still open to forming a government of national unity with Fatah.
But previous months-long talks between the two factions collapsed over Hamas’s refusal to bend to Western demands to recognise Israel, renounce violence and agree to past peace deals. — AFP
