Hamas militants fired rockets into Israel yesterday 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 yesterday, following a barrage of around 20 rockets that seriously wounded an Israeli woman on Tuesday. The fire threatened to draw Israel into the Palestinians' internal fighting in Gaza.
Inside Gaza, Hamas gunmen stormed the home of a top Fatah official early yesterday, 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."
Yesterday's rocket salvo at the Israeli town of Sderot, just outside Gaza, continued a barrage that began in earnest on Tuesday and wounded 17 Israelis, one seriously -- a woman whose house took a direct hit. There were no casualties yesterday 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 on 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.
Yesterday morning, the streets of central Gaza City echoed with the rattle of machine gun fire.
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