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Fatah labels offensive as Hamas coup attempt

Palestinian militants from Hamas take cover during a gunbattle Tuesday with Fatah militants in Gaza City. Fighting between the two factions has escalated recently as the struggle for power grows. (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Joel Greenberg Chicago Tribune
Palestinian militants from Hamas take cover during a gunbattle Tuesday with Fatah militants in Gaza City. Fighting between the two factions has escalated recently as the struggle for power grows. (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)

JERUSALEM – Fighters from the Hamas overran a key base and other positions of rival Fatah-led security forces in gunbattles across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, pressing a broad assault that supporters of President Mahmoud Abbas called an attempted coup to seize full control of the Palestinian government.

Hamas advances signaled a possible turning point in the violent power struggle between the two factions that has taken hundreds of lives since Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006, defeating Abbas’ Fatah party.

Fighting has escalated to what many in Gaza call civil war. It has included execution-style killings, shootouts at hospitals and two cases this week in which people were hurled to their deaths from rooftops.

A total of 28 Palestinians were killed Tuesday, hospital officials said. More than 40 have died in clashes this week.

The internal strife has dimmed prospects for a revival of regional peace efforts, undercutting attempts to restart talks between the Palestinians and Israelis. The U.S. has aided Abbas, who advocates negotiations while Hamas rejects any permanent peace with Israel.

In a key gain for Hamas on Tuesday, its forces captured the headquarters of the Fatah-led National Security Force in the northern Gaza Strip after an hours-long battle that claimed 13 lives, according to hospital officials. The compound near the Jabalya refugee camp was pounded with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and machine gun fire.

Other Fatah posts were taken by Hamas fighters, and residents said the Islamic group was in control of the northern and central Gaza Strip, with Fatah still controlling key security installations in Gaza City, including the presidential compound.

Fatah’s Central Committee warned after a meeting chaired by Abbas at his West Bank headquarters in Ramallah that Fatah ministers would suspend participation in a unity government with Hamas if the fighting did not stop. The coalition was formed three months ago.

Several incidents raised fears that the factional violence could spread to the West Bank. A deputy cabinet minister from Hamas was kidnapped by Fatah gunmen and Abbas’s presidential guards raided offices of a Hamas-controlled television station, confiscating equipment and arresting three staff members.

Late Tuesday, Fatah gunmen wounded four Hamas members in the city of Nablus.

Fighting raged across Gaza City on Tuesday as residents huddled in their homes and combatants targeted symbols of leadership on both sides. A rocket-propelled grenade hit the house of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas in the Shati refugee camp, but there were no casualties among family members. Mortars landed near Abbas’s Gaza residence. Neither leader was home.