Gunmen fired at the house and office of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas yesterday and warring factions threw militants to their deaths from high-rise buildings, in a dangerous escalation of infighting in Gaza.
There were no reports of casualties in the attack on Haniyeh's house in the Shati refugee camp next to Gaza City.
His office would not say if he had been inside when the house and surrounding area came under heavy fire for about 15 minutes from a nearby high-rise building. But his wife, children and grandchildren were, his family said.
There were no immediate reports of injuries from the incident that came four hours after a shaky truce was declared to end a bout of factional fighting.
Gunmen later opened fire on Haniyeh's office in the Gaza Strip, while he was inside the building meeting with other Cabinet ministers, an official in the office said.
"We are taking fire," the official said, adding that the Cabinet meeting had been suspended and blaming the attack on Fatah gunmen on a rooftop.
It was the first time in a month of fighting between Hamas and rival Fatah that Haniyeh was an apparent target.
There was no comment from Fatah about either attack.
Before daybreak yesterday, the sides reached an agreement to stop the clashes and Fatah-linked security forces began pulling back from points of friction around the Gaza Strip.
But several such ceasefires in recent weeks have been brief. Shooting could still be heard at several points around Gaza City as residents awoke yesterday.
The fighting took a grisly turn on Sunday when Hamas militants kidnapped a member of the elite presidential guard of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, took him to the roof of a 15-story apartment building and threw him to his death.
That set off more skirmishes around the city.
Fatah militants surrounded the house of a Hamas mosque iman, fired rocket-propelled grenades at the four-story building and then entered it, firing at the iman, and taking him away. His body was later brought to a hospital and Hamas pledged revenge.
Just before midnight, a Hamas activist was thrown off the 12th floor of a building and killed, security officials said. Four other Hamas men in the building were shot and wounded, bringing the day's toll to three dead and 36 wounded, medical officials said.
Fifty-five people have been killed in the latest outbreak of violence, which erupted in the middle of last month over an unresolved dispute over control of the powerful security forces.
Abbas and Haniyeh have called on gunmen to pull back from streets and rooftops to allow about 24,000 Gaza 12th grade high school students to start their final exams yesterday.
Daliya Naji, a 16-year-old high school senior, said the fighting in Gaza had kept her awake all night.
"I am a good student, but I feel my brain is empty," she said. "I can't think anymore and I don't know what to do."
She said she hoped she would pass her exams in order to be accepted to a university in Egypt.
"At least it will be my ticket out of Gaza," she said.
The deadly infighting has overlapped with new clashes between Israel and Palestinian militants. Early yesterday, Palestinian militants fired five rockets into southern Israel, the army said.
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