Clashes broke out in Gaza City early on Sunday, injuring at least six people, as Hamas-run security forces pressed a territory-wide crackdown on rival Palestinian factions after a deadly bombing. The fighting erupted overnight when Hamas-run police units moved to arrest members of the Army of Islam, a small armed group believed to have links to Al-Qaeda.
"Hamas forces came to arrest us early this morning, just after midnight," one member of the group told reporters, according to AFP. "There was fighting for several hours, with rocket-propelled grenades, explosions and gunfire, but they did not arrest anyone."
At least six people were hurt, said a medic at Gaza's main Al-Shifa hospital. Witnesses said they heard heavy exchanges of gunfire and blasts and that several people were injured.
The clashes came as Hamas cracked down on rival movements suspected of planting a bomb on Friday night that killed five senior acivists and a five-year-old girl. Hamas on Saturday blamed the attack at a Gaza City beach club popular with its members on Fatah party.
Since the explosion Hamas-run forces have arrested more than 300 people according to senior Fatah officials. Hamas forces raided the houses of two Fatah leaders, Zakariya al-Agha and Ibrahim al-Naja, and confiscated their cars, a senior Fatah official told AFP.
Security forces have also raided more than 40 offices, sporting clubs and charities, most of them linked to Fatah, confiscating computers and documents, according to the independent Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.
On his part, Islam Shahwan, the Gaza police spokesman, on Saturday said that his forces managed to seize big amounts of weapons and ammunition used by "remnants of the coup trend" within Fatah to spread security chaos in the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas' security forces in the West Bank, meanwhile, arrested 34 Hamas members in separate raids across the Israeli-occupied territory, according to a senior Palestinian security official.
