Gaza truce shaken by attack on Hamas ministry

GAZA, June 11 (Reuters) Palestinian factions reached a new Egyptian-mediated truce today in a bid to halt a cycle of bloodletting but the deal got off to a shaky start as shootings continued, including an attack on a Hamas minister's office.

Heavy fighting, in which six men were killed and dozens wounded since Saturday, casts further doubt on the future of a three-month-old Palestinian coalition formed by the governing Islamists of Hamas with President Mahmoud Abbas's secular Fatah movement.

''The ceasefire is limping on crutches and is in danger of collapsing if violations on both sides do not stop,'' an official involved in the truce negotiations told Reuters.

Shortly after the ceasefire took effect at 11 am 1330 IST, several gunmen sprayed bullets at the office of Sports Minister Bassem Naim of Hamas, who is a close Hamas associate of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, an aide to the minister said. Naim was escorted away unharmed, the aide, Ahmed Mhessen, said.

He said the gunmen were from the Fatah faction and that they ''opened direct and heavy fire on the building and the minister's office'' in what he called an assassination attempt.

But a Fatah official denied any attack against the minister. He accused Hamas of ''lies and fabrications''. He added: ''It is Hamas gunmen who are shooting everywhere in Gaza.'' It was the first attack on a member of the unity government since Haniyeh brought in members of Fatah in March in a bid to end a cycle of internal bloodletting and ease international sanctions imposed after Hamas was voted into power last year.

Gunmen had earlier fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a police station within minutes of the truce, and militants from both camps continued to block key Gaza intersections with checkpoints, in violation of the deal.

The latest fighting has been the worst since a ceasefire declared a month ago after a wave of violence killed more than 50 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them fighters.

GUNFIRE AND SIRENS A key motive behind the new truce was to permit 70,000 high school students in Gaza and the occupied West Bank to take their matriculation exams peacefully.

''These clashes were regrettable and harmful,'' Abbas said at a high school in the West Bank town of Ramallah where the exams were getting under way. He said both Fatah and Hamas were still working ''to put an end to these phenomena''.

The tests began on schedule in Gaza, but most pupils took circuitous routes to their schools in a bid to avoid the gunmen as the sounds of shooting punctuated the air, witnesses said.

Musbah Abu al-Kheir, 17, passed several armed checkpoints on his way to school from a refugee camp outside Gaza City.

''Fatah and Hamas have no appreciation for the fact we are having final exams today,'' he said.

''How are we supposed to take exams to the sounds of gunfire and ambulance sirens?'' Among the victims of yesterday's intensive gun battles that spread along the coastal enclave from the southern town of Rafah to Gaza City, was a pro-Hamas Islamic cleric pulled from his home and shot several times in the street.

That shooting came after a guard from Fatah was shot and thrown to his death from a high building, officials said.

More than 600 Palestinians are estimated to have been killed in factional fighting since Hamas's 2006 election victory.

REUTERS KK BD1625