Fatah says members being arrested by Hamas in Gaza

29 July 2007

GAZA (Reuters) - A senior official in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement accused Hamas on Sunday of a sweeping campaign to detain members of the group in the Gaza Strip.

"They have been searching for Fatah men," said the official, Ibrahim Abu An-Naja, alleging Hamas has been carrying out nightly raids on homes since defeating Fatah forces in the territory in a brief civil war last month.

He told a news conference that because the raids were still going on, he could not give an exact figure for the number of men he said were detained by Hamas.

"It is an attempt to eliminate (Fatah) -- but how can a 50-year-old movement like Fatah be eliminated," Abu An-Najah said.

Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Abu An-Naja's comments were "full of false accusations and lies".

He said Fatah complaints of an arrest campaign were aimed at covering up its own detention of Hamas members in the West Bank, where Abbas's movement holds sway.

Abu Zuhri said hundreds of Hamas men were "in the jails of the Palestinian security services in the West Bank", including one of its leading figures in the territory, Ahmed Doula.

Doula, he said, was rearrested on Thursday, shortly after he was released from a detention centre run by Abbas's presidential guards.

Abu Zuhri said those arrested by Hamas in Gaza were "collaborators (with Israel), drug dealers and violators of public order".