Hamas gunmen killed two Pales-tinian policemen loyal to the rival Fatah movement early yesterday, just hours after the sides agreed to a new ceasefire meant to end more than a week of factional fighting.
Fatah officials condemned the killing but said they remained committed to the truce. Gaza City remained calm at midmorning, in contrast to the pitched battles that raged in city streets a day earlier. However, hundreds of people called for revenge at the policemen's funeral, raising the prospect of renewed fighting.
Fatah spokesman Tawfiq Abu Khoussa said the policeman, cousins in their early 20s, were killed as they were patrolling Gaza City when their vehicle was attacked. Six other people in the car were wounded, he said.
PHOTO: AP
"They came under fire from an ambush of masked gunmen affiliated with Hamas," Abu Khoussa said.
He said Fatah considered the shooting a violation of the ceasefire, but would still honor the truce, announced just before midnight by President Mahmoud Abbas.
"Fatah is still committed to the agreement and to the announcement by President Abbas last night," he said.
About 300 people attended a funeral for the dead officers yesterday. Many of the men were armed, shooting in the air and calling for revenge.
At one point, the funeral march passed by the house of Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar, a top Hamas official, and mourners shouted epithets. Zahar apparently was not in the area at the time.
Security officials had initially thought the shooting was related to a long-running dispute between two local families and unrelated to the past week of political violence.
Ten people have been killed in Gaza since Abbas called on Saturday for early elections.
A senior aide to Abbas said the president planned to issue a decree next week to lay the legal foundations for the fresh parliamentary and presidential elections, which Hamas has described as a "coup" and unconstitutional.
Hamas has said it would boycott any polls. No date has been announced.
Meanwhile, the deputy leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, has come out against early elections in the Palestinian territories, saying in a video tape broadcast on Al-Jazeera yesterday that voting would lead only to defeat and the right policy was armed struggle.
"Any way other than holy war, will lead us only to loss and defeat," al-Zawahri said.
He described Abbas as "America's man in Palestine," and warned that if Palestinians accepted him as their president, it would be "the end of holy war."
The video was the 15th time this year that al-Zawahri has sent out a statement.
In yesterday's tape, he appeared exactly as in previous videos that have been authenticated by CIA analysts.
He wore a black turban and white robe and pointed his finger at the camera for emphasis. As usual, he had a rifle behind his right shoulder that was leaning against a plain brown backdrop.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
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