Gaza/Al Arish, Egypt: Prime Minister Esmail Haniya, called yesterday for an end to looting of abandoned Fatah assets in Gaza and proposed reconciliation talks with President Mahmoud Abbas.
"I demand that all our people show calm and self-restraint and not take any action against those houses and compounds that contradicts the morals of our people," Haniya told reporters before weekly prayers.
Hamas fighters and looters ransacked the blood-spattered Palestinian presidential compound in Gaza on Friday as their leader ordered an end to reprisals against their routed, Western-backed Fatah rivals.
Civilians poured through Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's presidential compound in Gaza, hauling away fridges, satellite dishes, even doors.
"We have taken the authority," one fighter said as he took a car. Green Hamas flags flew over the compound. Pictures of Abbas and his predecessor, the late Yasser Arafat, lay on the ground.
In Abbas's own Gaza office, a masked man, clutching his AK-47 assault rifle, eased into the President's chair while he and his fellow gunmen took pictures of each other.
"Hello, Condoleezza Rice?" one masked man joked into the President's telephone. "You have me to deal with now."
Looters smashed up the villa of Mohammad Dahlan, a Fatah security chief much hated by Hamas.
They ripped up roof tiles, broke down walls with sledgehammers and threw equipment from the windows as smoke wisped out of the upper floor.
Meanwhile, 97 Palestinians, most of them Fatah fighters fleeing the advance of their Hamas rivals, sailed into the Egyptian port of Al Arish yesterday aboard a fishing boat, Egyptian police said.
