Gaza City (eCanadaNow) - After hours of fighting which killed at least 14 people and wounded dozens, Hamas Thursday overpowered one of four major security compounds in Gaza City, belonging to President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah-affiliated security forces, hospital officials and witnesses said.
Television pictures on Hamas' al-Aqsa satellite channel showed dozens of members in the force walk out the Preventive Security headquarters, bare-chested and their hands on their heads.
They ducked briefly as Hamas militants fired over their heads in celebration.
The "conquest" of the compound meant Hamas, which already seized most security posts in the north and south of the Strip as well as along the border with Egypt in the past two days, meant Gaza was no largely in its hands.
Hamas militants man several roadblocks along Salah a-Din road, meaning they also control the Strip's main north-south traffic artery.
Only three other main headquarters in what is known as Gaza City's "Security Square" are still controlled by Fatah. They are Mahmoud Abbas' presidential compound which houses his offices and Force 17 Presidential Guard, the General Intelligence and the Saraya, which houses the administration of Abbas' security forces.
Speaking on al-Aqsa, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuchri spoke of a major "victory" and a second "liberation," the first being from the Jewish settlers evacuated from Gaza under Israel's August 2005 unilateral pullout from the Strip and the second from whom he called the "traitors."
Fatah had earlier denied Hamas' claim of control over the compound, insisting it managed to repel the attack and even arrest some 15 Hamas gunmen.
Fatah officials in the Information Ministry issued an order seeking to prevent the broadcast of the images on al-Aqsa, but failed.
Residents in the area earlier said Hamas fighters using megaphones called on them to "come down" and see for themselves that the compound was in it hands, declaring the area was now "safe," "clean" and "removed from corruption makers."
Exchanges of fire are also ongoing around the other three Gaza City headquarters, but fighting focussed on the Preventive Security, considered Hamas' most hated rival.
It was previously headed by Gaza strongman Mohammed Dahlan, despised by Hamas for past crackdowns against it and alleged corruption. He is believed to laying low in Cairo.
A 13-year-old was also caught in a cross-fire in the southern town of Khan Younis and another Palestinian killed north of Gaza City, bringing Thursday's death-toll to at least 16, and the number of Palestinians killed in vicious internecine clashes since they first resurfaced last Thursday and escalated dramatically Monday to some 86 lives.
Abbas meanwhile convened an emergency meeting of Fatah's Central Committee and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee in Ramallah, to discuss pulling Fatah out of the three- month-old unity government with Hamas.
An aide said he rejected out of hand some eight conditions posed by Hamas in return for a truce, which included demands that he sack certain security chiefs.
On Thursday morning Hamas meanwhile rejected a proposal to send an international force to the Gaza Strip, saying it would regard such troops as "an occupying army" to be dealt with "accordingly."
"Hamas is against the deployment of any international force at this time," spokesman Sami Abu Zukri told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
The movement would regard an international force as an "occupying army, he continued, and deal with it accordingly.
Both Abbas and Israeli Premier Ehud Barak have proposed stationing a multi-national force in the battered salient.
"We have always asked for international forces to come to the West Bank and Gaza. But I'm telling you that this is not an easy thing to do," chief Palestine Liberation Organization negotiator Saeb Erekat told Israel Amt Radio.
"This will depend on the mandate, on who will send troops, who will not send troops, who will come to the situation," he added.
But Abu Zukri said Hamas saw the possible deployment of a multinational force as an attempt to strengthen one side at the expense of the other.
