Palestinians battle on in Gaza, toll now 55 dead

GAZA, Jun 13 (Reuters) Palestinians battled on across the Gaza Strip early on Wednesday and eight more factional fighters were killed, raising the death toll to 55 in four days of the fiercest internal fighting in months, hospital officials said.

Gunmen from the Islamist Hamas movement attacked an area near the home of an official of President Mahmoud Abbas's secular Fatah movement, killing six of the group's men in fighting that went of for several hours, Fatah officials said.

The two groups are locked in a bloody power struggle that threatens the three-month-old unity government and has pushed the Gaza Strip to the brink of civil war.

In the latest clashes two more Fatah gunmen were killed in separate clashes with Hamas in central Gaza, and 10 other people were wounded, hospital officials said.

Hamas said it had taken over several posts from Abbas's National Security Force in the fighting.

Residents reported green Hamas flags flying from smaller compounds as well in central Gaza, including an empty home belonging to Abbas'a national security adviser Mohammad Dahlan in Nusseirat refugee camp.

Fatah had no immediate comment on these reports.

Hamas said Fatah militants fired a rocket-propelled grenade against the house of its deputy minister of information, setting the house ablaze but causing no injuries.

A Palestinian minister warned today the violence could spread to the West Bank, which is relatively calm.

Fatah's leaders said yesterday they would quit the unity government they joined under Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh if the fighting did not end.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Ziad Abu Amr, a political independent visiting Tokyo, warned on Wednesday the violence in Gaza could spread to the West Bank, which suffers 70 per cent unemployment, if nothing is done, urging the international community to provide financial aid.

''The idea now is to see how we can salvage the situation,'' he said. ''If you have two brothers put into a cage and deprive them of basic essential needs for life, they will fight.'' ''I don't think we should put the blame on the victim.'' The head of an Egyptian security delegation in Gaza that has tried to mediate over the past months called for a rally at 11 a.m.

(0800 GMT) to demand the militants lay down their arms.

Yesterday, Fatah forces raided a Hamas television station in the West Bank city of Ramallah, arresting three people. Hamas officials said a member of their party who is a senior civil servant in the Transport Ministry was also snatched outside his office by unknown gunmen in the same city.

REUTERS PJ SSC1333