Three boys, driver killed amid mounting Palestinian tensions
By Geraldine Chris,WNS Israel Correspondent
GAZA CITY - Three young children of a senior Fatah official and their driver have been killed in a drive-by shooting in Gaza, amid mounting tensions between the party of moderate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and the ruling Islamist Hamas movement. The three Baalusha brothers - Salam, six, Osama, seven, and Ahmed, eight - were killed along with their driver, Mahmud al-Habil, 25, when unidentified gunmen opened fire on their car from two vehicles near a school in the Rimal district of Gaza City, medics and security officials said on Monday. The boys' father, Baha Baalusha, a colonel in the Fatah-dominated Palestinian intelligence services and a former investigator there, was at home during the attack, they said. A Palestinian security source said Baalusha - widely despised by Hamas - was the target of the attack, adding that "this is the most odious crime among those committed in favour of the current security anarchy." Baalusha escaped an assassination attempt several months ago.
Four other children who were on their way to school in the area were wounded, one seriously, in the attack that left the Baalusha car riddled with dozens of bullets, medics said. The boys' bodyguard was also wounded. Blood-splattered schoolbags, books and a sandwich bag lay on the backseat of the car after the attack that the Palestinian president slammed as "an atrocious crime committed by scum who killed the children of our people". "I have demanded of the interior minister to arrest the assailants as quickly as possible," he told reporters in Ramallah. A Hamas spokesman, Fawzi Barhum, also condemned the killings carried out by "the enemies of the Palestinian people."
Monday's killing came a day after unidentified gunmen opened fire on the convoy of the Hamas interior minister, Said Siam, in Gaza City. No one was wounded in that attack and four men were later arrested in connection with the shooting. The incidents come against rising tensions between Fatah and Hamas after Abbas announced on Saturday that he intended to call early parliamentary and presidential elections to resolve a spiralling political crisis between the two rival groups.
posted by wnsworld @ 9:37 PM
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