Hamas in control of much of Gaza Strip

Hamas forces Wednesday blew up or captured three more security compounds from outgunned Fatah defenders who surrendered by the dozens as the Islamic militant movement expanded its control of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas battered Fatah’s four main compounds with mortar shells, rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons. Both Palestinian factions fired wildly from high-rise rooftops, and Hamas turned a mosque into a grenade-launching base.

By late Wednesday, Hamas controlled nearly all of the densely populated coastal territory outside this capital city.

At least 22 people were killed or found dead during the day, bringing to more than 60 the three-day death toll in a conflict that increasingly resembles a civil war.

Hospitals reported 80 wounded. The dead included two U.N. relief workers and a 16-year-old boy felled when about 400 civilians marching in Gaza City to protest the violence came under fire from unknown gunmen.

The rival factions nominally share power in the Palestinian Authority, which administers Gaza and the West Bank. But they have differing visions of a future Palestinian state. The secular Fatah favors peace with Israel; Hamas advocates its destruction. Their immediate battle is over control of Palestinian security services that employ tens of thousands of gunmen.

After more than a year of sporadic clashes and stalemates, Hamas moved decisively this week to try to seize a monopoly on armed force in Gaza.

Better organized and more highly motivated, it has thrown entire battalions against its rival, raising the conflict to a new level of brutality that has included kidnappings and summary executions on both sides.

“What is going on in Gaza is madness,” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah’s top official, said Wednesday.

The fighting terrorized Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants, keeping many in their homes. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which hands out food to 30% of the population, cut back on its distributions after two of its Palestinian workers were killed by crossfire.

“We are used to seeing Israeli planes attack our security headquarters, but that is nothing compared to the heavy shelling today,” said Lama Hourani, a women’s rights activist who lives in Gaza City.

Fatah’s U.S.-backed security forces, running short of ammunition with no reinforcements in sight, appeared to be slowly disintegrating. About 170 Fatah fighters surrendered during one battle Wednesday; an additional 40 fled to safety in Egypt by breaking through a border fence, police there said.

In Gaza City in the evening, Hamas fighters with loudspeakers called on families with relatives in the Fatah security forces to encourage them to surrender by Friday or risk death. The announcements said Fatah’s military leaders had left Gaza.

Fatah’s top security official, Mohammed Dahlan, has been absent for weeks. Some officials said he was in Egypt for knee surgery. Fatah’s forces in Gaza have remained on the defensive, trying to protect their bases.

Abbas, showing characteristic restraint, so far has not sought Israel’s permission to move Fatah reinforcements across Israeli territory from the West Bank to Gaza, Israeli officials said.

Meanwhile, the officials said, Hamas for months has been stockpiling heavy weapons in Gaza, apparently purchased with aid from Iran and smuggled across the border from Egypt.

“Gaza is rapidly approaching the point of no return, when Hamas takes over,” said Oded Granot, the Arab affairs commentator for Israel’s Channel One television. “Fatah is suffering from a lack of motivation and leadership.

“Abbas has to make a choice between two evils: allow Gaza to fall or go down in history as the Palestinian leader who [escalated] a civil war.”

Violence spread to the Fatah-dominated West Bank, where Fatah gunmen raided a pro-Hamas TV production company in the city of Nablus and abducted 12 employees after a shootout with Hamas gunmen that left one passerby wounded.

The more populous West Bank has remained relatively free of the cycles of violence that have engulfed Gaza. But Fatah appeared to be bent on retaliating there for its setbacks in the coastal territory. The gunmen threatened to kill their 12 hostages unless Hamas stood down in Gaza.

Late in the day, Hamas proposed a truce in Gaza but set conditions that Fatah was certain to reject, including surrender of Fatah’s control over its scattered police and military forces.

Sami abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, said the movement had passed its proposal to Egyptian mediators. It was unclear whether it had been delivered to Fatah. The proposal called for oversight of a cease-fire by Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Palestine Television, a pro-Fatah station, reported that Abbas had spoken by telephone to Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas and that the two had agreed on “the need to end the fighting and return to the language of dialogue.”

Fighters on both sides have repeatedly ignored previous appeals by the two leaders.

Haniyeh also holds the post of interior minister, making him nominally in control of Hamas’ 6,000-member paramilitary Executive Force. But Hamas officials say the force is taking its cues from the Izzidin al-Qassam Brigade, the movement’s 15,000-member military wing, led by Ahmed Jabari.

The two Hamas groups have joined forces in a methodical takeover of seven Fatah compounds since Tuesday. They have seized vehicles, weapons and hundreds of Fatah fighters. Many were let go with the understanding that if caught fighting again they would be executed.

Fatah once counted as many as 70,000 fighters in Gaza. Far fewer, evidently, are resisting Hamas, although it is unclear exactly how many. The 18,000-member regular police force, dominated by Fatah members, appears to be sitting out the fighting.

The Fatah fighters belong to four groups: Abbas’ elite Presidential Guard, the National Security force, the Police and Preventive Security force and the General Intelligence service.

Their respective headquarters in Gaza City came under siege Wednesday in battles that could prove decisive. Hamas fighters took over rooftops of nearby houses and cut off the surrounding roads.

In the southern city of Khan Yunis, Hamas forces surrounded the main Fatah headquarters and ordered everyone inside to leave, witnesses said. About 170 Fatah men surrendered before the building was destroyed by a bomb, said an official with the Presidential Guard.

Hamas militants blew up a second Fatah security building near Rafah, on the Egyptian border, after a gun battle. The two factions were fighting over another compound in Rafah.

The Popular Resistance Committees, a militant group allied with Hamas, said it had taken control of Gaza’s southern border.

Israeli officials have voiced alarm at the advances by Hamas, but U.S. officials said they had no indication that Israel might intervene to stop the factional fighting in Gaza.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Israeli and Palestinian leaders had asked him to explore the possibility of a multinational force in Gaza.

“There are many issues which we will have to consider” -- whether to agree to an international presence in Gaza and, if so, where to locate the force and what its mission would be, Ban said after presenting the idea to Security Council members.

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boudreaux@latimes.com

Special correspondent Abu Alouf reported from Gaza City and Times staff writer Boudreaux from Jerusalem. Staff writer Maggie Farley at the United Nations and special correspondent Maher Abukhater in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report.