Hamas Takes Gaza Security Compound
Hamas fighters overran Fatah-allied Preventive Security headquarters in Gaza City on Thursday, a key target in their battle to control the entire Gaza Strip, witnesses and a security agency official said.
Fatah officials said seven of their fighters were shot to death in the street outside Preventive Security. A witness, Jihad Abu Ayad, said the men were being killed before their wives and children.
"They are executing them one by one," Abu Ayad said. "They are carrying one of them on their shoulders, putting him on a sand dune, turning him around and shooting."
Some of the Hamas fighters kneeled down outside the building, touching their foreheads to the ground in prayer. Others led Fatah fighters out of the building, some of them shirtless or in their underwear, holding their arms in the air. Several of the Fatah men flinched as the crack of gunfire split the air.
"We are telling our people that the past era has ended and will not return," Islam Shahawan, a spokesman for Hamas' militia, told Hamas radio. "The era of justice and Islamic rule have arrived."
Hamas called on Fatah to surrender the second key security installation in Gaza without a fight.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, heralded what he called "Gaza's second liberation," after Israel's 2005 evacuation of the coastal strip.
Hamas has already seized control of most of Gaza from Fatah forces loyal to U.S.-backed president Mahmoud Abbas, reports CBS News correspondent Robert Berger. Abbas ordered his forces Thursday to strike back for the first time, but that appeared to be too little, too late.
Previously, Abbas had told the guard to maintain a defensive posture at his house and office in Gaza.
In response to Hamas' pending takeover, the European Union suspended all humanitarian aid projects in the Gaza Strip Thursday. United Nations aid agencies pulled their people out a day earlier.
Numerically superior Fatah forces were crumbling fast under the onslaught by the better-armed and better-disciplined Islamic fighters. Before dawn, Fatah abandoned positions in central Gaza, then blew them up rather than turn them over.
Hamas claimed it stormed one key Gaza City security headquarters and was on the brink of taking over another, but Fatah forces dismissed the allegations.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah met with the decision-making bodies of Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the West Bank town of Ramallah, and would make an "important" announcement later, aides said. One aide, speaking on condition of anonymity because no decision had been made, said Abbas was considering pulling Fatah out of its governing coalition with Hamas.
Hospitals were operating without water, electricity and blood. Even holed up inside their homes, Gazans weren't able to escape fighting that turned apartment buildings into battlefields.
Maha Baraakat and her family have been trapped in their Gaza home since the fighting began. She contends that fighting is not a civil war, reports CBS News correspondent Richard Roth.
"It is a distinctly Hamas-Fatah clash going on; It's Fatah on Hamas. The citizens are staying out of this... it's basically a fight for power," said Baraakat
A Hamas military victory in Gaza would split Palestinian territory into two, with the Islamic extremists controlling the coastal strip and Western-backed Fatah ruling the West Bank. Israel was watching the carnage closely, concerned the clashes might spawn attacks on its southern border.
The two factions have warred sporadically since Hamas took power from Fatah last year, but never with such intensity. Hamas reluctantly brought Fatah into the coalition in March to quell an earlier round of violence, but the uneasy partnership began crumbling last month over control of the powerful security forces.
More than 70 people, most of them militants, have been killed since a spike in violence Sunday sent Gaza into civil war. Early Thursday, eight more casualties were added to the tally.
Hamas vowed to press on.
"There will be no dialogue with Fatah, only the sword and the rifle," Nezar Rayyan, a top Hamas leader, told Hamas radio. "God willing, we will lead the Friday prayer in the president's office, and transform the (Gaza City) security complex into a big mosque."
Hamas' strategy has been to wrest control of outlying areas before closing in on Gaza City nerve centers. By Thursday, three of the coastal strip's four main towns had either fallen to Hamas or were on the verge of doing so.
Clashes broke out at three Fatah-allied villages in southern Gaza, but Hamas encountered little resistance as it took over security positions and homes belonging to pro-Fatah officers. A teenager was killed in the cross-fire.
Hamas fired rocket-propelled grenades toward Abbas' compound from a distance of 800 yards, provoking return fire from his presidential guard. For the first time since the fighting began, Abbas ordered his guard to strike back against Hamas militants, and not simply maintain a defensive posture, an aide said.
He spoke on condition of anonymity because the situation was fluid.
Moean Hammad, 34, said life had become a nightmare at his high-rise building near the Preventive Security headquarters, where Fatah forces on the rooftop were battling Hamas fighters.
"We spent our night in the hallway outside the apartment because the building came under cross-fire," Hammad said. "We haven't had electricity for two days, and all we can hear is shooting and powerful, earth-shaking explosions.
"The world is watching us dying and doing nothing to help. God help us, we feel like we are in a real-life horror movie," he said.
Shaher Hatoum, a nurse at nearby Al Quds hospital, said the facility had no electricity, water or blood, and that wounded were propped up on ward floors. Hundreds of bullets flew through windows, and fighters ignored the hospital's appeals to hold fire just long enough to have the generator and water pipes fixed, Hatoum said.
"We are waiting here for our end," Hatoum said.
The violence has exposed the depths of the disarray in Fatah's ranks since Hamas ended Fatah's 40-year dominion of Palestinian politics last year.
Israeli defense officials said Wednesday that Israel, which evacuated Gaza in 2005, would not intervene unless Hamas took over Gaza and started attacking Israel.
Fatah has asked Israeli permission to bring in more arms and armored vehicles, but Tzahi Hanegbi, chairman of the Israeli parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, told Army Radio that arming Fatah would be "insane" because the weapons would fall into Hamas hands.
He said Israel was considering backing Fatah forces in the West Bank, but did not elaborate.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he discussed the possible deployment of a multinational force in Gaza with the Security Council on Wednesday.
"We have always asked for international forces to come to the West Bank and Gaza," Abbas confidant Saeb Erekat told Israel's Army Radio. But, he added, "Honestly, on the personal level, I believe that if we don't help ourselves as Palestinians, nobody can."