Hamas said on Friday it had freed dozens of members of the rival Fatah movement detained after a mass rally in Gaza City in honour of the late Yasser Arafat ended in eight people being shot dead. The interior ministry of the Hamas-led government dismissed by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said that it had freed “dozens of people who were arrested after the trouble and rioting that broke out during the demonstration. A ministry statement said Ismail Haniya, prime minister in the sacked government, approved the releases. Hazem Abu Shanab, a spokesman for Abbas’s secular Fatah movement, confirmed that “a small number” of people held by Hamas had been released overnight. “I have ordered the release of all the people arrested if there is no proof against them of an attack on the security forces,” Haniya said in a speech broadcast on Hamas television on Thursday. Hamas rounded up at least 200 Fatah party members in Gaza on Tuesday a day after the deadly rally at which Islamist gunmen killed eight people.