The governing Hamas movement and the former ruling Fatah faction sought to draw a line under intra-Palestinian violence by jointly agreeing on Wednesday to outlaw the carrying of arms by militants. Three people have been killed and more than a dozen wounded since the start of the week in clashes between the factions in Hamas' Gaza Strip stronghold.Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, the de facto leader of Fatah, and Hamas' premier Ismail Haniya had both issued appeals for calm but the sense of bitterness between the two sides was underscored on Tuesday evening when clashes broke out at funerals for two victims of the violence.
Following the funeral gunfire, Haniya and Fatah representatives met for emergency talks in a bid to put an end to the spiral of bloodshed in a territory where gunmen from a series of armed factions have come to regard themselves as above the law. The two sides emerged in the early hours to announce an agreement that no members of the factions would be able to carry their weapons in public.