Jerusalem – Palestinian police officers and Hamas gunmen waged running gun battles Sunday night in Gaza City, which began when the police tried to confiscate illegal weapons.
At least two Palestinians were killed, including one policeman, and about 40 people were wounded in the fighting, the worst internal Palestinian violence since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip last month.
The Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas, last week began enforcing a prohibition against militants carrying weapons in public in Gaza.
But when police officers stopped a car carrying Hamas members Sunday evening, shooting erupted and spread through two neighborhoods in Gaza City that are known as Hamas strongholds, witnesses and the Palestinian security forces said.
One of the Hamas members in the car was Muhammad Rantisi, the son of Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a senior Hamas leader who was killed in an Israeli missile strike last year.
There were conflicting reports about whether Muhammad Rantisi was detained, but as word of the confrontation spread, so did the shooting, first in the Sheik Radwan neighborhood, where the initial incident took place, then the nearby Beach refugee camp. Numerous gunmen fired at a number of police stations.
The casualties filled the emergency room at Shifa Hospital, the city’s main hospital. The wounded included both police officers and Hamas militants, the hospital said.
“Hamas bears full responsibility for the result of these acts and the serious violation of law and order and playing with the blood of our people,” the Palestinian Interior Ministry said in a statement.
Friction between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which is dominated by Abbas’ Fatah movement, has been increasing in recent days.
In local elections Thursday in dozens of small communities in the West Bank, Fatah won 54 percent of the vote, compared with 26 percent for Hamas.