Fatah force seizes Hamas TV in West Bank

RAMALLAH, West Bank, June 12 (Reuters) Palestinian Presidential Guards stormed the offices of a Hamas-controlled television station in the West Bank city of Ramallah today and seized equipment, a Palestinian security source said.

The raid on al-Aqsa Television by a force loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas of the Fatah movement was the clearest instance of factional conflict in the otherwise calm West Bank since clashes between Fatah and Hamas broke out in the Gaza Strip on Saturday.

The station was still on air, apparently broadcasting from its main base in Gaza, where the Islamist Hamas movement has its main power base.

Ramallah, the main administrative centre for the two Palestinian territories, has been little touched by factional violence that has killed, by one estimate, more than 600 people since Hamas won a parliamentary election January last year.

Ramallah houses Abbas's presidential offices and Fatah, the secular movement once led by the late Yasser Arafat, is generally stronger in the West Bank. Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas is based in Gaza.

REUTERS RKM KP1632