MIDDLE EAST:Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniyeh cut short his first official trip abroad yesterday to return to Gaza after gunmen shot dead a senior Hamas militant on the street in the latest round of an escalating factional crisis.
Mr Haniyeh, who leads the Hamas government in the Palestinian territories, dismissed concerns of an imminent civil war, but some of his officials on the ground openly blamed a "death squad" from their Fatah rivals for the killing.
Bassam El-Farra (32), a commander in Hamas's militant wing and a judge in an Islamic family court, was killed on a street in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, yesterday morning. Some witnesses said the gunmen had been eating breakfast at a cafe opposite the court. When Mr El-Farra arrived at 7.40am, they dragged him out of his car, forced him to his knees and shot him several times in the head and chest.
Several thousand armed men gathered in Khan Yunis for the funeral yesterday. Mr El-Farra's wife said he had received several death threats in the past, most recently on Tuesday.
The killing came only two days after gunmen killed the three young sons of a senior Fatah intelligence official, Baha Balousha, in Gaza City. That attack raised fears of a descent into serious internal conflict.
The dispute between the factions, who both control large armed militias, worsened after Hamas won elections at the start of the year. The two sides have tried to negotiate a coalition government to ease a costly international financial boycott, but the talks have repeatedly broken down. At least 40 Palestinians have been killed in factional gun battles since March.
After yesterday's killing, hundreds of Hamas gunmen took to the streets of Khan Yunis to hunt down the killers. "Hamas is not going to forget the blood of its members," said Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for the group.
Fatah denied any involvement.
Mr Haniyeh, who was in Sudan yesterday, tried to play down the killings. "Words such as 'civil war' don't exist in our dictionary. They don't exist in our make-up, in our culture," he told reporters in Khartoum.
"We will protect the national unity of the Palestinian people and will thwart any attempt to instigate an inter-Palestinian struggle."