August 7, Trouble in Gaza

August 7, Trouble in Gaza, originally uploaded by anonimoh2005.

AUGUST 7 Fatah gunmen storm Gaza buildings

Web posted at: 8/8/2005 2:47:4

Source ::: Agencies

A Palestinian displaying coffee mugs commemorating Israel's planned withdrawal from Gaza in his shop in Gaza City yesterday.

GAZA: Gunmen stormed two buildings in the Gaza Strip yesterday to protest what they said was the "kidnapping" of a top official from the leading Fatah group.



The gunmen from Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, part of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah group, said they were protesting after senior official Suleiman Al Fara was taken away by men they believed to have come from the Preventive Security Service.



The Preventive Security Service, a powerful Fatah-dominated internal security force set up by the late president Yasser Arafat in 1994, did not comment on the incident.



Detentions of Palestinians by security forces have sometimes been carried discreetly, leading some to believe those detained had rather been abducted.



The gunmen first took over a building in the town of Khan Younis owned by Palestinian Red Crescent Society and then seized a municipal building nearby. Neither building was occupied.



Both incidents seemed to be the latest examples of factional rivalry in the West Bank and Gaza, part of a violent political culture that Abbas has vowed to combat.



"We will continue to carry out our protest activities and we are prepared to carry out things beyond imagination," said one of the gunmen. Fara is the director of the office of Farouq Al Qadoumi, the chairman of Fatah and a Palestine Liberation Organisation leader who is currently living in exile.



Qadoumi said in a statement that Fatah would "take the roughest measures of conduct against the kidnappers and those who stood behind them if Fara was not released in 24 hours".



The Red Crescent did not comment on the seizing of the building.



Tension between various forces in the Gaza Strip grew last week after Fatah activists began training what they called a "Popular Army" that they said would help to keep law and order.



Officials close to Abbas, under pressure at home and abroad to slim down security services and disarm burgeoning militia, had said the Fatah force did not have approval.



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Caption



A Palestinian man watches gunmen as they stormed a building owned by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society at the Khan Younis refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip August 7, 2005. Gunmen stormed a building in the Gaza Strip owned by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and fired in the air on Sunday after masked men took away a top official from the dominant Fatah movement. REUTERS/Mohammed