Hamas gunmen raided the home of a top Fatah security official on Wednesday, killing five of his bodyguards, a spokesperson said, as violence spiralled in Gaza despite a new Palestinian truce deal.
The attack on the house of Rashid Abu Shbak in a southern neighbourhood of Gaza City came hours after the rival factions announced they had agreed another truce to end the bloodiest violence in for months.
Sixteen people were killed in factional fighting on Tuesday, the bloodiest day since Islamist group Hamas and the Fatah movement headed by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas agreed to forge a unity government in February.
Members of the military wing of Hamas, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, stormed Shbak’s house and killed ”at least four of his guards”, Fatah spokesperson Abdel Hakim Awat said, later putting the death toll at five.
He said the gunmen also set fire to part of the house and briefly detained Shbak’s wife and daughter before fleeing the scene.
The attack brings to 29 the number of people killed in factional fighting in the past four days, and came despite a truce that was supposed to have taken effect at midnight on Tuesday.
Like two other ceasefires announced since Saturday, the latest truce appeared dead in the water as gunfire and explosions echoed through Gaza overnight.
”Hamas and Fatah met to apply the agreements of recent days putting in place a ceasefire at midnight, as well as a common control centre,” the two groups said in a statement late on Tuesday.
It said the deal, negotiated with the help of Egyptian mediators, included the lifting of barricades and the release of hostages from both sides.
No sooner had the announcement been made than one of the Egyptian mediators was injured when gunmen opened fire on a convoy of Fatah and Hamas leaders after they failed to stop at a barricade, sources said.
Eight officers in the Abbas-controlled national security service were killed near Karni and more than 20 wounded on Tuesday, a medical source said, in the bloodiest attack in Gaza since the new government took office on March 17.
Eight people died in other clashes elsewhere on Tuesday. Gaza City was deserted except for prowling gangs of masked men.
The fighting, on top of Monday’s resignation of Interior Minister Hani al-Qawasmeh, has dealt a major blow to the national unity government set up by Fatah and Hamas to quell factionalism.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday he was ”gravely concerned” over the violence and the United States, which has led a Western boycott of the Hamas ministers in Ismail Haniya’s government, called for a halt to the bloodshed.
Meanwhile, Hamas militants unleashed a barrage of rockets at an Israeli town on Tuesday, confining terrified residents to their homes and raising the spectre of Israel being dragged into the
bloody conflict.
The rocket salvo on the town of Sderot, just outside Gaza, wounded 17 Israelis, one seriously — a woman whose house took a direct hit. Ambulances raced back and forth across the battered town, picking up casualties. Residents counted more than 20 rockets.
It was the first time in three weeks that Hamas, which runs the Palestinian government alongside Fatah, claimed responsibility for firing rockets at Israel. — AFP, Sapa-AP