KILLINGS PUT GAZA ON EDGE

Leaders of the Fatah Party accused gunmen of deliberately ambushing and killing the three young sons of a senior Palestinian intelligence officer Monday, an attack that threatened to escalate fighting between rival factions.

The boys and their driver were killed by black-masked men who riddled their car with more than 60 rounds of automatic-weapons fire as they were leaving for school. The boys’ father, Col. Baha Balousheh, a Fatah loyalist who dodged a September shooting by Hamas militants, was not in the car.

Doctors said one of the boys was shot 10 times in the head. A bodyguard in the car and at least four bystanders were wounded in the 7:10 a.m. shooting. Children walking to school dove to the pavement or fled screaming.

Later in the day, hundreds of enraged mourners burned tires, blocked roads and shut down the city’s central market, a possible prelude to warfare in the coastal territory that has been plagued by clan feuds, surging crime and political violence.

Fatah leaders said the slayings crossed a line in the factional struggle for control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a conflict that has claimed scores of lives. The episodic fighting triggered by the Hamas movement’s upset victory in parliamentary elections in January had not previously targeted children.

Hamas condemned the attack and denied staging it. No group claimed responsibility. Fatah officials, including Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, were careful to avoid casting blame.

Senior intelligence officials said it was unclear who carried out the attack. But it brought tensions between the rival political movements to a boil two days after Abbas said he expected to call early elections in a bid to oust the Iranian-backed Hamas government, end Western economic sanctions and open the way for peace talks with Israel.

Hamas’ leaders, who refuse to recognize Israel or renounce violence against the Jewish state, have said that such a move would be illegal and meet resistance.

Police investigators said it was possible that the gunmen meant to kill the children’s father, thinking he was inside the white sedan with tinted windows. Balousheh, an officer in the Fatah-led Palestinian general intelligence service, became notorious a decade ago as an interrogator in a clampdown on Hamas by a previous Fatah government.

But the family said it was convinced that Osama, 9, Ahmed, 7, and Islam, 6 -- Balousheh’s only children -- were the targets.

Abbas and other authorities agreed.

“Whoever did this knew how to get to him,” Balousheh’s wife, Linda, told mourners outside the family’s apartment building. “He adored his sons.”

Members of Balousheh’s security detail said their boss routinely sent his children to school at least 20 minutes before he left for work.

“They obviously had the building under surveillance, so they must have known he wasn’t in the car,” said Maher Ghosein, one of Balousheh’s bodyguards.

Abbas called the attack “a revolting crime carried out by human scum who wanted to kill children.”

Abdel Karim Kahlout, a mufti who is Gaza’s top Islamic authority, issued a religious ruling that the attackers should be sentenced to death for targeting innocents.

The shooting occurred just after Ali Hassan, a 53-year-old apartment building superintendent, waved good morning to the three boys as they walked through the lobby in their school uniforms, playfully teasing one another, and hopped in the waiting car.

Balousheh was getting dressed when the gunfire erupted half a block away. He rushed to a window on the top floor of the 13-story building and saw “hell open its doors,” he said.

The car came under fire as the driver, Mahmoud Habil, 27, slowed for a speed bump on Ahmed Abdel Aziz Street near Wahda Street.

Watching from the 13th floor, Ghosein, the bodyguard, said he saw gunmen firing from one vehicle behind the boys’ car and from two vehicles in front of it on opposite corners of Wahda Street. He also saw five gunmen get out of other cars and open fire. At least 15 men took part in the attack, he said.

Abed Shaquoura, 12, was walking past the intersection on his way to school when the shooting broke out. He ducked for cover in a doorway. After the gunmen raced off, he was the first person to approach the bullet-riddled car.

“I opened a car door and a dead child fell out,” he told Palestine Television.

A child’s backpack, emblazoned with cartoon characters and the word “friend,” rested on the blood-soaked front seat. Another backpack and a small plastic bag containing a sandwich, also covered with blood, were in the back seat.

Furious Fatah activists shut down parts of the city but avoided new bloodshed. One group stormed the parliament building, where Fatah lawmakers demanded the ouster of Hamas Interior Minister Said Siyam.

Protesters also marched in the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Tulkarm, demanding that Hamas yield control to a multiparty government capable of stopping lawlessness.

A funeral procession joined by more than 1,000 mourners snaked through Gaza City, with some waving yellow Fatah flags and firing guns in the air. At the city’s hillside cemetery, the boys’ bodies were held aloft in white burial shrouds and laid side by side in a single grave.

The bereaved father, a slight man in a black leather jacket who leaned on two aides for support, penned a farewell note to his boys and slipped it into the grave before they vanished under the sandy soil.

Later, fighting back tears, Balousheh addressed the killers and hinted at revenge.

“OK, all of you have sons,” he said. “All of you have families. All of you have bodyguards. Just you wait.”

Some Fatah officials were more explicit. Mohammed Dahlan, a member of parliament, said, “If the criminals are not brought to justice, then Fatah will deal with the situation.”

Rather than blame Hamas explicitly for the killings, Fatah officials and activists emphasized the Hamas-led government’s responsibility to track down the culprits.

“The government knows who they are,” said Fatma Habil, the slain driver’s sister.

Fatah partisans were quick to note that the police had arrested four suspects within hours of a shooting attack Sunday on the interior minister’s convoy, in which no one was injured.

Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas condemned the killings, and his government promised a speedy investigation. Hours after the funeral, a few hundred Hamas supporters marched in Gaza City, chanting, “No to the killing of innocents,” and paid a condolence call at the Balousheh home.

Monday’s attack was the latest of several aimed at the Fatah-led intelligence service.

The most serious occurred in September when gunmen killed five intelligence officials, including a general, near the prime minister’s home.

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boudreaux@latimes.com

Times special correspondent Maher Abukhater in Ramallah contributed to this report.

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Back story

Under Fatah Party founder Yasser Arafat, Palestinian Authority security forces sometimes cracked down on the militant Hamas movement, imprisoning its leaders.

Hamas won a landslide victory in January’s parliamentary elections, giving it the prime minister’s office and the right to form a government.

Hamas’ refusal to recognize Israel or renounce violence led to a cutoff of Western aid, throwing its government into crisis.

Hamas and the more moderate Fatah, which has renounced violence and accepted Israel’s right to exist, have tried unsuccessfully to form a coalition government that would renew Western aid.

Street fighting between the two factions erupted in April, when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, of Fatah, attempted to limit Hamas’ policing power. Weeks of assassinations, kidnappings and gunfights ensued.

On Monday, gunmen fired into the car of a senior Fatah intelligence officer who was a key figure in Hamas crackdowns, killing his three children as they were being driven to school.

Source: Times reporting