Gaza violence raises leadership questions
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – A militiaman standing on the roof of his in-laws’ home was shot dead Wednesday in a disputed incident that led to the worst day of clashes between Palestinian factions since they agreed to a truce two weeks ago. Four other people died in the violence in the Gaza Strip.
The renewed fighting raised concerns that neither Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of Fatah, nor Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, who heads the Hamas government, is able or willing to stop their security services and militias from plunging the Palestinians into wider armed conflict.
Rival gunmen poured into the streets of the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya after the 25-year-old Fatah-affiliated militiaman, Ala Mohammad Inaya, died from a single bullet to the head. The ensuing clashes left a 22-year-old female bystander dead and 17 other people, mostly combatants, wounded.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said the militiaman was killed by accident from a gun fired at close range. But the dead man’s family said his brother-in-law, the only other person on the roof, was unarmed. The family and Fatah officials blamed the daytime killing on an unseen Hamas sniper.
The violence spread to the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis with the abduction of the local deputy chief of Fatah’s Preventive Security Service police.
Members of the force met resistance while storming a house where they believed their colleague was being held, a Fatah statement said, and one officer was wounded. The car rushing him to a hospital after dark came under attack from the Executive Force, a Hamas paramilitary police unit, killing three Fatah officers. Hamas and Fatah accused each other of shooting first.
The factions have fought intermittent street battles since last spring when Hamas, victorious in elections, took over the Palestinian Authority government, which had long been dominated by Fatah.
Seventeen people were killed in December after Abbas said he would call new elections more than two years ahead of schedule to try to unseat Hamas, the militant Iranian-backed Islamist movement that resists his efforts to restart peace negotiations with Israel.
A truce brokered by Egypt last month crumbled Monday when Hamas gunmen shot at a brother of a senior Fatah militant in the Gaza Strip. The rival factions then went on a kidnapping spree but later freed 14 captives after mediation by a third militant group, Islamic Jihad.
Various Palestinian security services, meanwhile, searched a third day for abducted photographer Jaime Razuri, who works for Agence France-Presse. The 50-year-old Peruvian was seized Monday by several gunmen in Gaza City as he was returning from an assignment with an interpreter and a driver.