Gaza Plunges Deeper Into Chaos
Israeli warplanes pummeled Hamas targets on Friday, killing at least eight people in a stepped-up campaign against Gaza rocket squads and adding an extra layer of violence to infighting between Palestinian gunmen, who traded automatic weapons and grenade fire at a Gaza City university.
The concentric circles of violence have scuttled a 5-month-old truce between Israel and Gaza militants and brought Palestinian factions that nominally share power to the brink of civil war. More than 70 Palestinians have been killed in the spasm of bloodletting that broke out Sunday.
Hamas militiamen took the internal Palestinian strife to an ominous new level by widening the group of targets, seizing aides to two prominent Fatah officials.
The U.S. has made no secret about which faction it is supporting in the near-civil war. It's backing Fatah, contributing $59 million to equip and train the palace guard of Fatah leader and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, reports CBS News national security correspondent David Martin.
"When there is a showdown, we want the right people to come out on top," says Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Hamas has fired more than 100 rockets across the border this week, reports CBS News correspondent Robert Berger.
Israeli missiles came screeching down on Gaza at least five times Friday in retaliation for Hamas rocket attacks that have sent southern Israel into a state of panic. At least 13 rockets fell throughout the day, injuring four people in the rocket-scarred town of Sderot.
One of the air strikes incinerated a minivan carrying Hamas militants and what the army described as "a large amount of weapons." Three fighters were killed and 12 people were wounded, Palestinian hospital officials said.
"We were sitting outside my grocery store when a huge explosion shook the area and a small minivan turned into a ball of fire," witness Jawad Dallou said.
People in a nearby mourning tent grieving for a victim of the Palestinian infighting were also wounded, he said.
Five Palestinians, including at least three Hamas militants, were killed and six wounded in an earlier strike east of Gaza City. The military said the target was a Hamas headquarters building.
Other air attacks throughout the day caused no fatalities.
In all, at least 20 Palestinians have died in Israeli air strikes that began on Tuesday.
Hamas said the Israeli military called the house of Ahmed Jaabari, head of Hamas' military wing, and warned his family the building would be hit, too.
People converged on the house to protect it, he said. Jaabari was not at home, and the military had no immediate comment.
In other developments:
Despite the intensified attacks, a senior Israeli army official said Israel had no immediate plans for a major ground offensive to halt rocket fire, because it is reluctant to unite warring Palestinian factions against a common enemy. He spoke on condition of anonymity because no final decision has been made.
Six days of fighting between Hamas and Fatah have claimed more than 50 lives and all but destroyed a 2-month-old power-sharing deal between the two groups. The fighting was touched off by Abbas' deployment of thousands of troops in Gaza City last week to try to restore law and order — a move Hamas took as a provocation because it wasn't consulted.
The two abductions in Gaza on Friday broadened the mayhem because it was the first time senior civilians with ties to Fatah were targeted.
Hamas gunmen seized Abdel Salam Abu Askar, a veteran journalist who advises Fatah's Gaza strongman, Mohammed Dahlan. Abu Askar was released after several hours.
The office director of a senior Fatah leader in Gaza, Abdullah Franji, remained in captivity late Friday.
Gun battles between the two factions on Friday killed three people.
Bullets and rocket-propelled grenades flew outside the Islamic University, a Hamas stronghold, in two bursts of fighting. Hamas fighters in control of the university battled Fatah forces who had taken up positions in the nearby foreign ministry building.
Grenades hit the office of university President Kamelen Shaath, who appealed for an immediate halt to the violence.
One person was wounded in the fighting at the school.
Street battles were down from their height two days ago, but the latest truce worked out between the sides on Thursday enjoyed no more success than a series of cease-fires on previous nights. That raised the question of who was in charge — and it appeared the political leaders of both Hamas and Fatah had lost control of their gunmen.
In previous rounds the two sides have fought to a draw, and there seemed to be no decisive winner this time either. Hamas has a better organization, but Fatah can rally more fighters, in part because it controls most of the security forces.
Although Israel said it's not taking sides, its air strikes made it harder for Hamas gunmen to move around, and Hamas used that fact to argue that Fatah and Israel were in collusion. Hamas TV on Friday named three Fatah security chiefs who it said were in secret contact with "foreign" security personnel.
"They are deep into treason, and we will deal with them accordingly," the broadcast said. The TV did not specify which foreigners, but Fatah forces affiliated with Abbas have received advice and training from the U.S.
Earlier in the week, some 500 Fatah security forces trained in Egypt under a U.S.-brokered deal returned to Gaza, passing through the border with Israel's permission.
Washington lists Hamas, which has killed more than 250 Israelis in suicide and other attacks, as a terror group. Hamas' parliamentary election sweep last year provoked punishing sanctions against the Palestinian government that have remained in place despite the formation of a national unity government in March.
International donors are demanding that Hamas renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist as a condition for restoring aid. Hamas' decision to resume violence in the form of rocket attacks on Israel is likely linked to the unity government's failure to lift the boycott.
Israeli media reported that between 2,500 to 3,000 of Sderot's 23,000 residents have fled the rocket-battered city in recent days.
On Friday, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni showed members of the diplomatic corps in Israel video of a Sderot school damaged by rocket fire.
"For too long the international community took the situation in the south of Israel as acceptable, as part of life in Israel, and it's not," she told Tel Aviv-based envoys.