The violence erupted when police encircled a house in the West Bank town of Qalqilya where a top Hamas field commander, Mohammad Samman, and his deputy Mohammad Yasin, had taken refuge, witnesses and security officials said. Both Hamas men and the homeowner died in the shootout, along with three policemen. Dozens of bullet holes in walls and furniture in the home attested to the ferocity of the fighting.
It was the bloodiest internal Palestinian clash in the occupied West Bank since the Western-backed Abbas launched a security drive and revived peace talks with Israel in 2007 after breaking with Hamas over its takeover of the Gaza Strip.Samman and Yasin had ignored calls to surrender, witnesses said. Palestinian security forces spokesman Adnan Damiri said police had tried to negotiate a peaceful end to the standoff.
"Thousands of shots were fired at the security forces," Damiri said, adding that large quantities of explosives were discovered in the Hamas hideout.
After the raid, Hamas threatened to call off Egyptian-sponsored reconciliation talks with Fatah that had been scheduled to resume in Cairo in July. Fawzhi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip said: "We in Hamas have come closer than ever to taking a decision to suspend our participation in the dialogue." A spokesman for Hamas's armed wing accused the Abbas-aligned forces of being "loyal to the Zionists" and alleged he was directly responsible for "the crime and its consequences."
| Tedious drivel about the politix of it all at the link... |