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Gaza City streets closed off
17/12/2006 12:15 - (SA)
Gaza City - Forces loyal to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas deployed en masse on Sunday around his office and house, after a presidential guard was killed in clashes with the rival Hamas movement.
Hundreds of masked gunmen closed off the streets in the west of Gaza City, stopping cars.
The men included members of the presidential guard and of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades militant group loosely affiliated with Abbas's Fatah party.
Early on Sunday, a member of the presidential guard, 22-year-old Ismail Mahmud, was killed and several people injured in what a security official described as an attempt on Sunday by Hamas members to storm a presidential guard training camp.
The clashes between the two main Palestinian groups came after Abbas announced on Saturday that he had decided to call early presidential and parliamentary elections as a way to resolve a months-old stand-off with Hamas.
A boy was shot dead and at least 18 other Palestinians were wounded late on Saturday as thousands of armed loyalists of the two rivals, some of them masked, took to the streets of Gaza after Hamas denounced Abbas's move as tantamount to a coup and a call to civil war.
Early on Sunday, high school students staged counter demonstrations across Gaza before the start of classes. No injuries were reported.
- AFP
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