DEBKAfile Exclusive: Thousands of Palestinian security officers loyal to Fatah are under Hamas siege at their last bastion – Gaza City’s presidential compound

June 13, 2007, 7:31 PM (GMT+02:00)

They are running out of food, water and ammunition. Hamas and its Executive Force have overrun some 80 percent of the Gaza Strip, while loyalists of Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah, including complete clans, are surrendering and turning in their weapons. Hamas has set up large prisoner camps, some in the rubble of the Gush Katif villages. Wednesday afternoon, a desperate Abbas appealed to Israel to permit arms and ammunition to be transferred from the West Bank. Israeli officers said it was too late. Fatah is a lost case and any arms crossing into Gaza will be seized at once by Hamas.

Earlier, DEBKAfile reported Hamas’ seizure of Gaza’s main south-north highway in fierce fighting with many casualties, most Fatah.

Palestinian security officers loyal to Fatah were fleeing Gaza for Egypt

By borrowing this Israeli tactic for bisecting the territory to contain terrorists, Hamas shut in Mahmoud Abbas’s Presidential Guard, which has not yet been thrown into battle, and choked off ammunition re-supply routes to Fatah fighters. To tighten their control, Hamas units also commandeered high rise rooftops.

Hamas then gave Fatah till Friday noon to surrender their arms or become wanted men under sentence of death.

Abbas called the situation “madness.”

Wednesday afternoon, Hamas used a tunnel to blow up Abbas’ Security Service HQ in Khan Younes, killing 10 members. UNWRA has cut down its personnel in Gaza after two aid workers were killed.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Hamas’ planning and combat tactics clear betray the professional hands of Syrian and Hizballah officers who have set up a command center in the Gaza Strip.

Tuesday, DEBKAfile reported: The brutal civil strife has brought the fragile Hamas-Fatah unity government to closure. The War Crimes Prosecution Watch has condemned rival Palestinian factions fighting in Gaza for attacking civilians, prisoners and hospitals.

Senior Palestinian politician Saab Erikat warned the “Mogadishu syndrome” is overtaking Palestinian Gaza. “If war and lawlessness are not extinguished, the fire will burn us all”

The outcome generated by the civil war is the separation of Palestinian rule between Hamas-controlled Gaza and the Fatah-led West Bank.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Hamas threw its entire 15,000-strong Executive Force armed with mortars, RPGs, heavy machine guns and grenades into the final bid to conquer the Gaza Strip, whereas Fatah commanders’ desperate appeals to Mahmoud Abbas for reinforcements drew nothing but a futile call for a ceasefire.

His Fatah earlier mounted an RPG attack on the Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya’s home in Gaza. No one was hurt. Hamas gunmen then shot dead the top Fatah commander in northern Gaza, his brother and cousin. Fatah then "executed" the senior Hamas commander in the North. Monday, Hamas bound a Fatah fighter hand and foot and hurled him from a 15-story building in Gaza to his death.

For two days, Hamas gunmen have been targeting injured Fatah fighters, killing them in ambulances and Beit Hanoun hospital beds. Fatah has retaliated with mortar and RPG attacks on the Hamas-controlled Shifa hospital.

Several attempts by the Egyptian mission in Gaza to arrange a ceasefire have been short-lived. In Cairo Tuesday, President Hosni Mubarak and Jordanian King Abdullah discussed the Palestinian crisis.