Rival Palestinians traded gunfire Friday in the occupied West Bank on Friday, wounding at least nine civilians and underscoring the fragility of a new truce between Hamas and Fatah. In other sign of tension between the two factions, the office of President Mahmoud Abbas blocked five major Hamas appointments to senior government positions. Witnesses said gunmen opened fire as thousands of Hamas activists and militants attended a rally in the West Bank city of Nablus.
It was the worst violence in the West Bank since Abbas last week threw down the gauntlet to the government by calling for fresh parliamentary and presidential elections. Days of violence earlier this week in the Gaza Strip killed 10 people.
A senior security source said Abbas had deployed Palestinian security forces loyal to him to try to calm tensions in Nablus. A Fatah official said Hamas chose to hold the rally despite what he said was an earlier agreement to delay it. "The friction was already there," the official told Reuters. "Now the two sides are shooting at each other."
The nine people wounded were civilians, witnesses and hospital officials said.