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Fighting kills 3 in Gaza

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published December 18, 2006

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Gunmen fired on the Palestinian foreign minister's convoy on Sunday and militants launched mortar shells at President Mahmoud Abbas' office in a daylong wave of factional violence that killed three people.

A truce between the rival Fatah and Hamas groups was announced after midnight, but armed militants continued patrolling the streets and the volatile coastal territory remained tense.

Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh accused Abbas of inflaming the political crisis by calling for early elections and said his Hamas group would boycott the poll. Abbas, a moderate from Fatah, called for new elections to resolve the political deadlock that has paralyzed the Palestinian government since the hardline Hamas militants won parliamentary elections in January.

Hamas' electoral victory split the Palestinian government, with Abbas seeking peace with Israel and Hamas refusing to even recognize the Jewish state's existence. The political tensions have repeatedly turned violent and the chaos has spiraled out of control since unidentified gunmen killed the three young sons of a Fatah-allied security chief last week.

Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar's motorcade came under fire Sunday as it drove near the Foreign Ministry in Gaza City. Zahar was unharmed, but the attack unleashed a ferocious battle that raged for more than an hour, the worst fighting since unity government talks broke down late last month. Medical officials said a 19-year-old woman was killed in the crossfire.

Zahar said top Fatah leaders were "fully responsible" for the attack on him "and what will happen."

In a separate attack blamed on Hamas, dozens of gunmen raided a training camp of Abbas' Presidential Guard near the president's residence, killing a member of the elite force.

Hamas gunmen also opened fire at a demonstration of tens of thousands of Fatah supporters in northern Gaza, wounding at least one person, and unknown militants fired at least two mortars at Abbas' office in Gaza City.

Elsewhere, the bullet-riddled body of a top security officer affiliated with Fatah, Col. Adnan Rahmi, was discovered in northern Gaza several hours after he disappeared, Palestinian medical officials and his family said.

Egyptian mediators and small Palestinian factions worked all day to broker an agreement between the two sides. But representatives of Fatah and Hamas did not appear at the news conference, leaving the announcement to Rabbah Muhanna, a senior official in the small Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. "Both sides are serious about the agreement," Muhanna said.

[Last modified December 18, 2006, 00:14:45]