Gaza slips into chaos amid killings

Gaza City: Palestinian gunmen fought inside a hospital and fired on the prime minister's offices after a truce collapsed yesterday, killing eight people in factional violence that cast fresh doubt over the future of the unity coalition.

"Everybody is shooting at everybody," a doctor at the Beit Hanoun hospital in the northern Gaza Strip said as a gunbattle raged between the Islamist Hamas and secular Fatah groups.

A member of Hamas's Executive Force, two Fatah fighters and another person were killed and 19 people wounded, hospital officials said.

The heavy fighting doom-ed an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire announced just hours before and threw a shadow over long-term prospects for the unity coalition that Hamas and Fatah formed three months ago.

The hospital battle, waged inside and outside the facility, was triggered by the shooting of a bodyguard of an intelligence officer affiliated with President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction.

Relatives of the dead man and Fatah fighters then stormed the hospital, which is guarded by the Executive Force, a security contingent loyal to Hamas.

In a separate incident, two gunmen - one from Fatah and the other from Hamas - were killed in a clash in a refugee camp in Gaza City. A Hamas fighter was killed in violence in the town of Beit Lahiye in northern Gaza.

Earlier, gunmen fired on the offices of Palestinian Prime Minister Esmail Haniya of Hamas. No one was hurt in the attack.