GAZA CITY -- Another two Palestinians died Saturday in clashes between rival factions in Gaza, bringing to 17 the death toll in three days of bitter fighting that has torpedoed talks on forming a unity government.
Rival supporters of the ruling Hamas movement and the Fatah faction loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have fought running gun battles and fired off volleys of mortars and grenades in the densely populated streets of Gaza City since Thursday night, medics and witnesses said.
The fiercest fighting since the Islamist Hamas won parliamentary elections one year ago has also left around 50 people injured, according to medical officials.
Amid the mounting casualties, the ruling Islamists suspended long-running talks with Fatah Friday night on forming a national unity government acceptable to Western donors.
Hamas accused the president‘s party of provoking the latest fighting.
‘The unity government talks were on the verge of full agreement and the announcement of a unity government when putschists inside Fatah ... rushed to blow up the situation to serve their own interests and a foreign agenda,‘ it said.
The accusations flew both ways.
‘It‘s clear that Hamas doesn‘t want the dialogue to succeed. The escalation began with Hamas,‘ said Fatah spokesman Tawfiq Abu Khussa.
Saturday‘s flare-up saw Mahmoud Khalil Khatib, 17, who appears to have been an innocent bystander and Mohammed Khattab, 33, an officer in the national security force, killed in early morning firefights in central Gaza City, medical sources said.
Hamas had earlier launched rocket-propelled grenades at the headquarters of the Fatah-dominated Preventive Security force and lobbed mortars at the home of Rashid Abu Shabak, the Gaza security chief loyal to Abbas.
Grenades late Friday hit the home of Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Al Zahar, a Hamas leader.
The streets of Gaza City were deserted Saturday as storekeepers shuttered up their shops and residents stayed in the relative safety of their homes.
The quiet was punctuated by occasional bursts of machine-gun fire.
Among the victims were a two-year-old child who was caught in the crossfire of a firefight in the south Gaza town of Khan Yunis and a 16-year-old boy killed in Jabaliya, according to medics.
In the West Bank, Palestinian police swinging batons and firing into the air, clashed with about 200 Hamas supporters who rallied to denounce Friday‘s shooting of a Hamas member in Tulkarem.
Hamas has called for Abbas, who is in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum, to return immediately to the Palestinian territories to help put an end to the mounting bloodshed.
Clashes broke out when Abbas called last month for early elections, a move Hamas dubbed an attempted coup d‘etat.
Subsequent clashes between Fatah and Hamas supporters killed more than 30 people between mid-December and early January.
The two-week lull that followed revived hopes of a deal on a unity government that would satisfy the demands of the European Union and the United States for a resumption of direct aid.
The Western powers froze funding when the Islamist Hamas took power in March, demanding that it first renounce violence and recognize Israel and past peace deals, something Hamas has steadfastly refused to do.
Fatah and Hamas had Tuesday begun a new round of unity talks, two days after a meeting between Abbas and exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Syria in which they said ‘considerable progress‘ had been made.