 Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas ordered yesterday a crackdown on wayward militants after gunmen opened fire at his West Bank headquarters in another sign of the chaos dogging the occupied territories. Gunmen from a radical group loosely affiliated to the ruling Fatah party fired a volley of bullets into the air inside the courtyard of the Palestinian leadership compound known as the Muqata in Ramallah after being ordered off the premises.
| "Beat it! Out! All of you! And take your artillery with you!" |
Furious at being ejected from the compound where they had been living for months, the militants ran riot through the streets, firing bursts of automatic weapon fire and damaging several restaurants, forcing a shopping center to close.
"Dey can't do dat to us!"
"Yeah! Let's go bust somethin'!" |
A spokesman for the gunmen said Abbas expelled a group of militants from his West Bank headquarters who had been given refuge by Yasser Arafat. Abbas ordered the 26 out after half a dozen of the gunmen — from his ruling Fatah faction — fired at his Muqata compound overnight while he was inside and then rampaged through the city, damaging shops. No casualties were reported. The 26, on an Israeli wanted list of 70 members of the Fatah-affiliated Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, had defied his demands to lay down their arms under peace moves he had agreed with Israel. The flare-up in North Mogadishu Ramallah began after security commanders met representatives of the 70 earlier in the week to press them to put aside their weapons. Abbas had allowed the 26 to stay at his headquarters after Arafat's death in November despite Israeli criticism. The spokesman said all the gunmen had left the compound on Abbas' orders and had gone to hiding places in Ramallah, the West Bank's political and commercial hub. It was not immediately clear if they took their weapons with them.
| Sounds like they did. What do you think? |
Faced with yet another embarrassing sign of the rampant unrest in the occupied territories, the Palestinian Authority denounced the group for "sabotaging and attacking security". |