Hamas and Fatah gunmen battled each other in the streets of the Gaza Strip yesterday, having sent civilians fleeing from their homes in an increasingly bloody power struggle that left more than two dozen Palestinians dead over the weekend.
An explosion early in the morning rocked the Gaza City home of a bodyguard to Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan, but the guard was not in the building and no casualties were reported.
Separately, gunmen took nine hostages, one in a brazen abduction in a bank.
The latest round of fighting began late on Thursday after an activist with the Islamic militant Hamas was killed in a bombing. By Saturday night, 25 Palestinians -- including two boys aged 2 and 12 -- had been killed and at least 76 were wounded, cutting short fitful efforts to unite the two rival factions in a coalition government.
A threat by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah to call early elections preceded the violence.
Residents of areas where the fighting was fiercest left to take refuge with relatives, and bulletholes pocked many of the buildings there. Others holed up inside their homes, afraid to be caught in the path of flying bullets.
The 12-year-old was killed late on Saturday during a shootout in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya. Firefights in Beit Lahiya continued yesterday, and neighborhood youths burned tires to protest the boy's death, said Sami Hodeib, a 43-year-old shopkeeper.
"This is not our battle," he said. "This is a power struggle. How was that boy to blame?"
He said he wasn't letting his own children, who were on a mid-year break from school, leave the house.
In Gaza City, factions deployed heavy security at major street corners and outside potential targets like the homes of Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas. Security was also reinforced around Palestinian media outlets and two Gaza City universities were shuttered.
Traffic in the town was severely disrupted by concrete barriers factions put up to block major roads.
At an emergency session of the Cabinet, Haniyeh called on gunmen to put their guns away and appealed to Abbas to immediately pull his armed men from the streets.
"We want to call on all our sons of the Palestinians, you have to protect national unity and let dialogue and logic rule," he implored.
A wave of kidnappings -- most of them short-lived -- has been part of the violence.
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