Six Palestinians were killed Sunday in a shootout between Hamas fighters and police loyal to the Fatah party in the West Bank.
Hamas fighters arrive at a news conference in Gaza City on Sunday after the Fatah raid in the West Bank. Hamas fugitives lobbed grenades and fired automatic weapons early in the day to push back Palestinian security forces storming their hideout in the northern West Bank. (Hatem Moussa/Associated Press) The incident in Qalqiliya began late Saturday when officers surrounded a hideout of Mohammed Samman, a leader of Hamas' military wing, Izzedine al-Qassam, and his assistant, Mohammed Yassin.
A battle followed as police tried to enter the house to arrest the pair before dawn.
The two operatives had been fugitives for six years, Palestinian security officials said. Palestinian Authority officials denied the arrests were politically motivated. They said the Hamas gunmen were involved in money laundering and stockpiling weapons.
"We found more than 150 kilograms of explosives in the house. We also found three explosive belts вЂ" two on the bodies of the gunmen who were killed," Palestinian security forces spokesman Adnan Damiri said.
Both Hamas men and the homeowner died in the shootout, along with three police officers.
In the Gaza Strip, a spokesman for Hamas's armed wing accused the forces supporting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of being "loyal to the Zionists."
Hamas, which won a parliamentary election in the Gaza Strip in 2006, ousted Fatah forces from the territory the following year.
Since then, members of the Fatah faction have detained hundreds of Hamas supporters in the West Bank and closed the group's institutions.
In recent months, the two factions have tried to reach a unity deal, but talks have run aground over Hamas' refusal to recognize Israel and renounce violence, a precondition for joining a coalition with supporters of Abbas.
With files from The Associated Press