‘Gazans are with whoever gives us a bag of flour’

ON HAMAS’S first day of full rule in Gaza, crowds looted strongholds of the rival Fatah yesterday — stripping the home of one of the party’s strongmen down to the flower pots — and militants sent a man plunging to his death from a rooftop.

But the violence, which came despite a Hamas offer of amnesty for Fatah, was sporadic. Gaza’s streets, deserted in the past week of fighting, were crowded with cars, pedestrians and triumphant fighters with the Islamic militant group.

Safe in Ramallah, Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, appointed his own prime minister yesterday after the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Hani-yeh, ignored the president’s announcement that he had been fired. Hamas’ military takeover of Gaza, after five days of battle, formalised the separation between Gaza and the West Bank, which lie on either side of Israel.