No image available
/ 13 November 2007
Hamas has rounded up scores of Fatah activists in the Gaza Strip following a rally that drew more than 200 000 supporters and ended in gunfire that killed seven people. The assembly on Monday, marking the third anniversary of the death of iconic Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, was the biggest held by President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah group in Gaza.
No image available
/ 12 November 2007
Gunfire killed at least six people and wounded 80 on Monday at a Fatah memorial rally for Yasser Arafat attended by hundreds of thousands of supporters of the defeated faction in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. The rare Fatah rally broke up in chaos after gunfire rang out.
Hamas paid Gaza security officials on Friday by dishing out cash from suitcases rather than using banks, as Israel tightened a clampdown on the Palestinian territory. An official said the group planned to circumvent banks by paying salaries to about 20 000 security forces and civil servants in cash.
No image available
/ 19 September 2007
Masked gunmen crouch behind piles of sand, fingers on the triggers of their rifles, while others rig explosives along the streets of Gaza. The Hamas-run Gaza Strip is bracing for a major incursion by Israeli forces after the Jewish state labelled the territory an ”enemy entity” on Wednesday, a move the Islamist group described as a declaration of war.
No image available
/ 7 September 2007
Hamas security officers beat protesters, hurled stun grenades and fired in the air to disperse open-air prayers the rival Fatah faction held in the Gaza Strip on Friday in defiance of the territory’s Islamist rulers. Palestinian medical officials said at least 20 people, some with gunshot wounds, were taken to hospital for treatment.
Israeli troops crossed into the central Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing seven Palestinian militants, including six from the Islamist Hamas group that controls the territory. Israeli forces exchanged fire with gunmen in al-Maghazi refugee camp, and some militants said they fired rocket-propelled grenades at the troops.
Alan Johnston, the BBC journalist held hostage in Gaza, was freed early on Wednesday after a late-night deal between the ruling Hamas Islamists and the al-Qaeda-inspired clan group that kidnapped him in March. ”It is just the most fantastic thing to be free. It was an appalling experience,” he told the British public broadcaster.
Israeli forces killed at least 11 Palestinians, most of them gunmen, on Wednesday in their biggest raid in the Gaza Strip since Hamas Islamists took over the territory two weeks ago, medical workers and residents said. The operation in Gaza City and the southern town of Khan Younis appeared to signal that Israel intended to keep strong military pressure on Hamas.
An Israeli soldier captured a year ago by militants from Gaza asked for medical treatment and urged Israel to release Palestinian prisoners, in an audio tape posted on the internet on Monday. Except for a handwritten letter to his parents in September, there had been no sign of life from Gilad Shalit since he was spirited into the Gaza Strip on June 25 2006.
Israel on Wednesday launched its first major attacks in the Gaza Strip since Hamas took over the territory, killing at least four Palestinian fighters. Israel carried out air strikes against rocket launch sites in northern Gaza after militants fired at least one makeshift rocket into southern Israel. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for firing the rocket.