Gaza fighting kills 17 as red lines crossed

FE Team | Published: June 13, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas (C) surrounded by security and the press in the West Bank city of Ramallah Monday.

GAZA CITY, Jun 12 (AFP): Palestinian gunbattles rocked Gaza Tuesday, killing 17 people in 24 hours as mortar shells slammed into the home of premier Ismail Haniya and the seafront compound of president Mahmud Abbas.
Amid the apparent no-holds barred confrontation, one person was killed and 10 wounded in a shooting at a hospital, while the Palestinian media are also being targeted.
No casualties were reported in either the attack on Haniya's modest home in Shati refugee camp or the sprawling Gaza City presidential compound of Abbas. Neither leader was present when the impacts were reported.
Security officials said three mortar shells exploded inside Abbas's compound while a fourth struck the home of Haniya, a senior member of Hamas, whose loyalists have been locked in deadly battles with Abbas's Fatah for six days.
Defying the latest ceasefire, Gaza plunged into renewed violence, with rival gunmen stepping up the stakes by opening fire on government offices and at a hospital in clashes that have killed 17 people since Monday.
The violence poses a serious threat to a national unity government that has grouped Fatah and Hamas around the same cabinet table since March with the express aim of halting the bloodshed and ending cripping Western boycotts.
Hamas militant Omar Nabhan Rantissi, a nephew of Hamas leader Abdelaziz Rantissi who was assassinated by Israel in 2004, was the latest to die, killed by gunmen in the southern town of Khan Yunis Tuesday, medical sources said.
Overnight, assailants fired more than 40 mortar shells against the Gaza City headquarters of the preventive security service loyal to Fatah, according to security sources who gave no details about possible casualties.
Rival activists went on an arsonist rampage, torching around a dozen homes of Fatah and Hamas members throughout the territory, the same sources said.
Hamas activists also kidnapped two Palestine TV technicians and blew up the building where they were abducted in Gaza City, a television official said.
A shell was fired at the main office of the official station, which Hamas accuses of being pro-Fatah, shattering windows at its imposing entrance.
Twenty-three Palestinians have now been killed in the lawless and radicalised territory awash with weapons since the latest bout of internecine bloodshed erupted last Thursday following weeks of calm.
On Monday, gunmen hunkered down on an adjacent rooftop fired on government offices as Haniya chaired the weekly cabinet meeting, forcing ministers to flee to safety in an attack that an official at Haniya's office blamed on Fatah.