Abbas orders elite guard to attack Hamas
By DIAA HADID - The Associated Press

RAMALLAH, West Bank --
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for the first time Thursday ordered his elite presidential guard to strike back against Hamas militants bent on besieging his Gaza City compound.

Previously, Abbas of Fatah had told the guard to maintain a defensive posture at his house and office in Gaza.

Abbas was in the West Bank town of Ramallah when he handed down the order.

This is a breaking news update. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Hamas, having wrested control of nearly all of the Gaza Strip, focused its firepower Thursday on the battle's top prizes - Fatah's security and political command centers in Gaza City.

Numerically superior Fatah forces were crumbling fast under the onslaught by the better-armed and better-disciplined Islamic fighters. As Hamas forces advanced through the crowded, impoverished seaside territory, Fatah fighters abandoned positions in central Gaza, blowing up installations instead of turning them over.

Hospitals were having to make do without water, electricity or blood units. Even holed up inside their homes, Gazans weren't able to escape the factional fighting that turned many apartment buildings into battlegrounds.

Aides to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is aligned with Fatah, said he would announce an "important decision" Thursday regarding the bƖσσdshɛd and the future of the Palestinian government, in which the two factions share power. The aides declined to comment on speculation he would announce the dismantling of the ruling coalition or declare a state of emergency that would give him sweeping powers.

A Hamas takeover of Gaza would deal a harsh blow to efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, because Abbas could no longer claim to represent all Palestinians and would lose his credibility as negotiating partner.

The two factions have warred sporadically since Hamas unseated Fatah in parliamentary elections last year, but never with such intensity. Hamas reluctantly brought Fatah into the coalition in March to quell an earlier round of violence, but the uneasy partnership began falling apart last month over control of the powerful security forces.

A Hamas military victory in Gaza would split Palestinian territory into two, with the Islamic extremists controlling the coastal strip and Western-backed Fatah ruling the West Bank - a development that would push the prospect of statehood even further away. Israel was watching the carnage closely, concerned the clashes might spawn attacks on its southern border.

More than 70 people, most of them militants, have been killed in the three days since Gaza slid into cινιℓ ωαr. Early Thursday, five more casualties were added to the tally.

Hamas vowed to press on.

"There will be no dialogue with Fatah, only the sword and the rifle," Nezar Rayyan, a top Hamas leader, told Hamas radio on Thursday. "This is a battle between Muslims and nonbelievers, and God willing, we will lead the Friday prayer in the president's office, and transform the (Fatah-controlled) security complex into a big mosque."

Hamas' strategy has been to wrest control of outlying areas before closing in on Gaza City nerve centers. By Thursday, three of the coastal strip's four main towns - Khan Younis, Rafah and Deir el Balah - had either fallen to Hamas or were on the verge of doing so.

A small militant group, the Popular Resistance Committees, stationed a security cordon at the Rafah crossing with Egypt, at the request of the Egyptians, to prevent Fatah fighters from streaming across the border. On Wednesday, 40 Fatah security officers broke through the border fence to flee the flighting.

In Gaza City, Hamas militants fired rocket-propelled grenades toward Abbas' compound 800 yards away, drawing fire from Abbas' presidential guard. From the West Bank, Abbas denounced the violence as "madness," but has been unable to rein it in.

Elsewhere in Gaza City, a gunbattle raged around the headquarters of the internal security agency for a second day. The intelligence service compound was also under siege, as Hamas fired dozens of rocket-propelled grenades in its direction. Mortar shells were lobbed overnight at a third key security headquarters, the National Security building.

Moean Hammad, 34, said life had become a nightmare at his high-rise building near the internal security headquarters, where Fatah security forces on the rooftop were waging a pitched battle with Hamas fighters.

"We spent our night in the hallway outside the apartment because the building came under cross-fire," Hammad said. "We haven't had electricity for two days, and all we can hear is shooting and powerful, earth-shaking explosions.

"The world is watching us dying and doing nothing to help. God help us, we feel like we are in a real-life horror movie," Hammad said.

Shaher Hatoum, a volunteer nurse at nearby Al Quds hospital, said the facility had no electricity, water or blood units, and that wounded were propped up on ward floors. Hundreds of bullets have flown through the hospital's windows, and fighters ignored the hospital's appeals to hold fire just long enough to have the generator and water pipes fixed, Hatoum said.

"We are waiting here for our end," Hatoum said. "I feel paralyzed and I can't do anything to help the wounded. I can't even help myself."

In other strategic pockets in the city, gunmen traded fire from rooftops and set up roadblocks to root out rival fighters. Some areas of the city were paralyzed by the fighting, with residents cowering at home. But in other sections, like the Old City, the local market was open, and people went about their business as usual because the location is not considered strategic.

Fatah has threatened to carry the fighting to the West Bank, where Hamas is weak. There have been sporadic battles in the West Bank this week, and early Thursday, Hamas charged that Fatah-linked security forces were rounding up Hamas activists there.

The violence has exposed the depths of the disarray in Fatah's ranks since Hamas ended Fatah's 40-year dominion of Palestinian politics last year.

Even if Abbas, a moderate, were to order a Fatah offensive in Gaza now - and there no sign he's planning do to that - his demoralized forces might no longer be able to turn the tide. Pulling Fatah out of the coalition government would be largely meaningless because Abbas appears too weak to take the next step: calling early elections that Hamas would likely win. He might also be too weak to declare a state of emergency.

Israeli defense officials said Wednesday that Israel, which evacuated Gaza in 2005, would not intervene in the fighting in Gaza for now. Only if Hamas took over and started attacking Israel, would Israel strike back, the officials said.

Fatah has asked Israeli permission to bring in more arms and armored vehicles, but Tzahi Hanegbi, chairman of the Israeli parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, told Army Radio that the notion of arming Fatah forces was "insane" because the weapons would fall into Hamas hands.

He said Israel was considering backing Fatah forces in the West Bank, but did not elaborate.

In a sign of Israel exploring ways out of the dilemma, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Tuesday floated the idea of an international force on the Gaza-Egypt border to stop arms smuggling.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he discussed the possible deployment of a multinational force in Gaza with the Security Council on Wednesday.

"We have always asked for international forces to come to the West Bank and Gaza," Abbas confidant Saeb Erekat told Israel's Army Radio. But, he added, "Honestly, on the personal level, I believe that if we don't help ourselves as Palestinians, nobody can."