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Hamas Militants Fire Rockets Into Israel

Posted on: Wednesday, 16 May 2007, 03:00 CDT

By SARAH EL DEEB

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Hamas militants fired rockets into Israel Wednesday even as they battled their rivals from Fatah in the streets of the Gaza Strip, confining terrified Palestinian residents to their homes and plunging the coastal territory further into chaos.

Hamas officials said the organization's men launched eight rockets at Israel on Wednesday, following a barrage of around 20 rockets that seriously wounded an Israeli woman Tuesday. The fire threatened to draw Israel into the Palestinians' internal fighting.

Inside Gaza, Hamas gunmen stormed the home of a top Fatah official early Wednesday, burning his house and executing six bodyguards inside, Palestinians security and medical officials said.

The gunmen fired mortars at the house of Fatah security chief Rashid Abu Shbak before storming it, planting pipe bombs and shooting those inside, the officials said.

Abu Shbak and his family were not home at the time of the attack, but the house was guarded by at least a dozen of his bodyguards. Dozens of reinforcements from the Preventive Security organization, which Abu Shbak used to head, were sent in to join the fighting.

Abdel Hakim Awad, a Fatah spokesman, angrily accused Hamas' leadership of the attack on Abu Shbak's house.

"All (Hamas) are killers from top to bottom, all are implicated," he said, charging that the Islamist group "wanted to turn Gaza into a new Somalia or Darfur."

Wednesday's rocket salvo at the Israeli town of Sderot, just outside Gaza, continued a barrage that began in earnest Tuesday and wounded 17 Israelis, one seriously - a woman whose house took a direct hit. There were no casualties Wednesday morning.

Hamas, which runs the Palestinian government alongside Fatah, claimed responsibility for firing the rockets. Hamas officials said the barrages were retaliation for an Israeli attack at an Israel-Gaza crossing point Tuesday - an incident that was initiated by Hamas, and which appeared to be an attempt to draw Israel into the fray. Eight Palestinian policemen loyal to Fatah were killed by Hamas fighters in that attack.

Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz summoned army commanders for late-night consultations to consider Israel's next move. Israeli security officials said there would be no large-scale military response to the rocket fire, because such retaliation would play into Hamas' hands by uniting the rival Palestinian factions against Israel. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions were classified.

On Wednesday morning, the streets of central Gaza City echoed with the rattle of machine gun fire, and were empty except for gunmen in black ski masks. Terrified residents huddled in dark homes after electricity to some downtown neighborhoods was cut off by a downed power line.

Fighting raged close to the heavily guarded compound of the Palestinians' moderate president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, which also was targeted by Hamas mortar fire overnight. Abbas is not currently in Gaza.

An Egyptian mediator said a truce was reached late Tuesday - the third in as many nights. But like the previous agreements, Tuesday's agreement collapsed within hours.

Gaza's turmoil further weakened hopes for a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, despite a new push by the Arab world to bring the sides to the table. The offer proposes Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from all lands it occupied in the 1967 Mideast War.

Negotiations, however, are inconceivable if the Palestinians descend into civil war.

This week's fighting was the worst since Hamas and Fatah agreed in February to share power.

At the core of the fighting is the unresolved power struggle between Hamas, which won parliament elections last year, and Abbas' Fatah, which dominated Palestinian politics for four decades. After a year in power and squeezed by an international aid boycott, Hamas realized it could not govern alone and brought Fatah into the government. But the two sides never worked out all their differences, particularly over who would control the Palestinian security forces.

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Karin Laub contributed to this report from Ramallah.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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