Last update - 00:00 09/12/2006
2 Palestinian guards hurt in Gaza parliament clashes
By The Associated Press
Two Palestinian parliamentary guards were wounded when demonstrators and parliamentary security guards exchanged fire at the Palestinian parliament building in Gaza City on Saturday, a lawmaker and medical staff said.
Some 1,400 uniformed police and other security officers demonstrating over the non-payment of their salaries stormed into the parliament compound while some fired into the air as slogans were chanted from loudspeakers.
Hospital staff said the condition of the parliamentary guards, who were protecting lawmaker Ahmed Bahar of the governing Hamas Islamist group, was not serious.
"We view very gravely the attack against the Palestinian Legislative Council, whose aim is to create tension in Palestinian areas," Bahar said at a news conference.
The violent marches escalated tensions between Hamas and its political rival, the Fatah movement of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
The clashes came as Abbas met with senior PLO officials at his West Bank headquarters to decide whether to dismiss the Hamas government and call early elections or let it continue, with the expectation that it would eventually be brought down by a deepening economic crisis.
The protesters alleged that Hamas was paying its own militia, the so-called Executive Force, while neglecting the members of the regular security forces. Addressing Hamas legislators inside the building over a loudspeaker, one of the protesters said: "Why are you hiding? Why are you ignoring our demands while you are feeding and increasing your militia and distributing the money that you smuggled from the outside."
In the West Bank city of Jenin, some 4,000 members of the security forces staged a march to press for their salaries.
Dozens of parents carrying infants broke into a mother-and-child clinic in the West Bank city of Hebron, which has been closed because of the health workers' strike. The parents demanded vaccinations for their babies. Several of the protesters burned tires outside the clinic and set large garbage bags on fire.
Later on Saturday, Palestinian union leaders said the strikers would return to their jobs Sunday, following government assurances of more payments. Doctors and nurses at government hospitals had been on strike since September, attending only emergencies and providing minimal services.
Hamas, squeezed by an international aid boycott since it came to power 10 months ago, has had trouble paying salaries of 165,000 civil servants, including about 80,000 members of the security forces, 40,000 teachers and some 15,000 health care workers. Doctors and nurses have been on strike for weeks.
Hamas leaders have brought cash in suitcases across the Gaza-Egypt borders, circumventing the refusal of most banks to transfer funds to Islamic militants from abroad, for fear of violating anti-terrorism regulations.