Hamas security forces killed the leader of an al-Qaeda-inspired group in the Gaza Strip yesterday in a shootout that claimed the lives of 22 people, the Hamas Interior Ministry said.
The fighting erupted on Friday when Hamas forces surrounded a mosque in the southern Gaza town of Rafah on the Egypt border where about 100 members of Jund Ansar Allah, or the Soldiers of the Companions of God, were holed up.
Moaiya Hassanain of the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said 22 people, including six Hamas police officers and an 11-year-old girl, were killed in the violence that also wounded 150.
The head of the radical Islamic group was killed when fighting resumed after dawn yesterday, Ihab Hussein a Hamas interior ministry spokesman said.
“The leader of Jund Ansar Allah, Abdel-Latif Moussa was killed in an explosion,” Hussein said. “It’s not clear whether he was killed from an explosives belt he was wearing or from Hamas gunfire.”
The confrontation was triggered when the leader of the group defied Gaza’s Hamas rulers by declaring in a Friday prayer sermon that the territory was an Islamic emirate.
Jund Ansar Allah and a number of other small, shadowy radical groups seek to enforce an even stricter version of Islamic law in Gaza than that advocated by Hamas.
These groups are also upset that the Hamas regime has honored a ceasefire with Israel for the past seven months.
Hamas says it does not impose its religious views on others, but only seeks to set a pious example for people to follow, while these splinter call for a more forceful imposition of Islamic law.
The groups also call for a wider global jihad against the entire Western world, while Hamas maintains the struggle is only against the Israeli occupation.
The hardline groups are perhaps the most serious opposition Hamas has faced since it seized control of Gaza and ousted its rivals in the Fatah movement in a five-day, bloody civil war in June 2007.
Hamas security blocked all roads to Rafah and declared the town a closed military zone. They said they have arrested about 40 members of the group so far.
Hamas government spokesman Taher Nunu said on Friday that the Hamas leadership was engaging in an operation against “outlaws” and called on Moussa’s followers to surrender to the authorities.
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