Hamas militants kill Palestinian security commander

The Palestinian president and prime minister, locked in a violent power struggle, today agreed to pull back their forces, after a senior security commander and four of his bodyguards were killed in one of the bloodiest battles in weeks of internal fighting.

Yesterday’s violence in Gaza – along with an Israeli raid in the West Bank that killed four Palestinian civilians – prompted prime minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas and president Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah to hold late-night talks, despite the angry accusations the two have traded in recent weeks.

“We are going to end all armed displays in the streets,” Haniyeh said after the meeting. Abbas had no comment.

Previous truce deals quickly collapsed, though, because of the political deadlock.

The Islamic militant Hamas controls the government, but the moderate Abbas wields power as a separately elected president.

The meeting came several hours after Col. Mohammed Ghayeb, head of the Abbas-allied Preventive Security Service in northern Gaza, was killed when Hamas gunmen attacked his home with rockets and grenades. The killing of the officer was likely to spark reprisal raids.

Ghayeb was on the phone to Palestine TV just moments before his death and appealed for help. “They are killers,” he said of the Hamas gunmen. “They are targeting the house, children are dying, they are bleeding. For God’s sake, send an ambulance, we want an ambulance, somebody move.”

The battle outside the house raged for much of the day and killed four of Ghayeb’s guards and a Hamas gunman. About three dozen people, including eight children and Ghayeb’s wife, were also wounded.

In several places in the West Bank late yesterday, Fatah militants attacked Hamas offices and vehicles. One Hamas activist was wounded, Palestinian security officials said.

Earlier yesterday, Israeli forces entered the West Bank town of Ramallah, the first major army raid since Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas had agreed two weeks earlier to try to ease tensions between the sides.

The two-hour raid, accompanied by heavy gun battles, turned central Ramallah into a battlefield with dozens of cars smashed and vegetable carts overturned. Four Palestinians were killed and 20 wounded in the fighting. The Israelis eventually left after detaining four suspects.

Olmert, who met with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak just a few hours after the raid, apologised for any civilian casualties, but said the operation was intended to protect Israel from terrorist attacks.

“Things developed in a way that could not have been predicted in advance. If innocent people were hurt, this was not our intention,” he said.

The summit had been intended to push for new Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts, but was overshadowed by the violence.

Standing next to Olmert in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, Mubarak condemned the raid. “Israel’s security cannot be achieved through military force but by serious endeavours toward peace,” he said.

Abbas said in a harshly worded statement that Israel’s peace promises rang hollow in light of the raid and demanded £2.5m (€3.7m) in compensation for the damage to shops and cars in Ramallah.

Israeli Cabinet minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a former defence minister, criticised the raid’s timing. “I don’t think this operation should have been carried out on the day of a visit by the Israeli prime minister to a country in which we have a supreme strategic interest,” Ben-Eliezer told Israel Radio this morning. “Our relations with Egypt are more important to us than anything else.”

The apparent target of the raid, Rabih Hamed, escaped with serious injuries. A photographer for the local news agency Maan was critically wounded by gunfire.