Palestinian police clash with Hamas

A Palestinian policeman and two civilians have been killed during clashes between security forces and Hamas members in Gaza City.

More than 40 people were also reported wounded in the fighting on Sunday evening, the first such incident since Israel withdrew from Gaza last month, witnesses said.

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Hamas spokesman in Lebanon, Usama Hamdan, gave a different account. He told Aljazeera that fighting broke out when the police came to arrest Muhammad Abd al-Aziz al-Rantissi, the son of the late Hamas leader Abd al-Aziz al-Rantissi, who was assassinated by Israel in 2004.

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Fighting quickly spread to the nearby Shati refugee camp where Hamas members shot four rocket-propelled grenades at a Palestinian police station, killing the policeman, and another at police in Shaikh Radwan, a Hamas stronghold in Gaza City.

al Jazeera

Three people were killed - including Shati refugee camp deputy police commander Ali Makawi - and more than 50 wounded as the Palestinian Authority attempted to enforce its authority by confiscating weapons from Hamas operatives in Gaza.

The clashes raged for about six hours and subsided only about midnight on Sunday local time, after Egyptian mediators stepped in. It was the fiercest internal fighting since 1996.

"Yesterday, we did not have enough bullets," said one of the protesting policemen last night.

"We had nothing to protect ourselves. Give us at least bullets to protect people and to protect our stations. Our commander died in front of us and we were running out of bullets."

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