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Gaza: Clashes erupted between forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Hamas government in Gaza yesterday, killing four people in the worst bout of fighting since the rivals agreed to a fragile truce two weeks ago.
At least 10 people were wounded in separate incidents across the Gaza Strip, hospital officials said.
Abbas's Fatah faction and Hamas declared the ceasefire in the wake of violence that escalated after Abbas called for early elections to break a political deadlock with the Islamists.
Hamas condemned Abbas's move as a coup to oust it less than a year after it surprised Fatah to win a parliamentary ballot.
The fresh violence is likely to revive fears among Palestinians that Gaza could slip into civil war.
Among the dead were two security officials loyal to Abbas who were killed in the southern town of Khan Younis, hospital officials said.
Abbas's Preventive Security force said the two were killed and another critically wounded when a Hamas police unit ambushed two of its vehicles. Hamas said the security force fired first.
In the Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza, one woman was killed after getting caught in the crossfire of a fierce clash between rival forces. Nine others were wounded, mostly combatants, hospital officials said. That clash came after unknown gunmen killed a member of Abbas's Fatah faction who was on a rooftop in the town of Beit Lahiya and a car carrying Hamas security officers was ambushed. Gunmen also abducted four Fatah members from the streets.
second time
Haniya to cut short trip and return home
Prime Minister Esmail Haniya of Hamas plans to cut short, for the second time, a tour of Arab nations and return to the Gaza Strip today, aides said.
The last leg of the trip was supposed to have been Jordan, which has offered to host a meeting between Haniya and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of the Fatah movement in an effort to defuse deadly tensions between their factions.
The aides said Haniya decided to break off his trip after Haj, to Saudi Arabia, to attend to unspecified "work".
In addition to travelling to Jordan, Haniya was also to have visited Kuwait and Qatar.
He broke off his original trip in mid-December following a deadly bout of Hamas-Fatah violence.
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