Hamas raids Fatah security HQ in Gaza City

Gaza: Hamas gunmen stormed a Fatah security headquarters in Gaza City on Tuesday, moving Palestinians closer to civil war, minutes after the Islamist group's deadline for Fatah to quit key facilities expired.

Meanwhile, the Fatah movement led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, has said it will decide within hours if it should quit the three-month-old unity government with Hamas Islamists, a spokesman for the secular group said on Tuesday.

After fierce factional clashes between the rivals in the Gaza Strip, Fatah spokesman Abdel-Hakim Awad said: "Fatah will in the coming hours decide its position on staying in the unity government and whether to withdraw its members from parliament."

An announcement on a Hamas radio station had given Fatah until 2 p.m. to pull security men out of the military intelligence, presidential guard, national security and preventive security facilities.

After the deadline passed, witnesses said gunmen from Hamas's armed wing attacked against a large security compound of Fatah's national security forces in Gaza City.
Heavy gunfire and explosions sounded in the area, but there was no immediate word on casualties.

The violence, described by Gazans as more brutal than in the past, has included a shootout in a hospital, dropping foes to their deaths from high-rise buildings and the execution-style slaying of a Fatah field commander outside his home.

A spokesman for Abbas's office accused "a group within Hamas, in which some political and military leaders are participating, of plotting a coup" aimed at imposing sole Hamas control over the Gaza Strip.

Evoking a measure Israel uses to cordon off Palestinian areas in operations against militants, Hamas's armed wing declared northern Gaza and the centre of the territory, where six people were wounded in clashes, "closed military zones".