Hamas fighters seized control of the Palestinian presidential compound in Gaza City on Thursday, calling it the "last bastion" of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah forces in the Gaza Strip.

The presidential compound is the last of four key Fatah-run security compounds in the city, which are now all under Hamas control, as the group completed its conquest of Gaza City amidst a campaign to gain complete control over the coastal strip.

The broadcast on a Hamas-run radio station said "the last bastion of corruption has fallen." Hamas fighters had earlier surrounded the compound.

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Also Thursday night, Hamas gunmen broke into the homes of Abbas and his senior aide Mohammed Dahlan in Gaza, and looted them.

Earlier Thursday, 99 Palestinian policemen loyal to the Fatah movement fled to Egypt on Thursday, an Egyptian security official said.

The policemen were border guards at Rafah and entered Egypt through the Rafah border post, the main crossing point between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, said the official, who asked not to be named.

For the moment they are in the custody of Egyptian security forces, he added. Forty policemen fled from Gaza to Egypt on Wednesday but the Egyptian authorities sent them back to Gaza later in the day.

Earlier Thursday, Hamas gunmen seized control over the Fatah-run National Security headquarters in Gaza City, Hamas said, shortly after taking control over other key security compounds in the city, as well as over the southern Gaza town of Rafah. (Click here for map)

Also Thursday, a prominent Fatah gunman who had once bragged about executing Hamas fighters and torching homes of rivals was killed in the ongoing fighting between rival factions Fatah and Hamas.

The gunman, Samih Madhoun, was one of the leaders of a 1,500-strong force that had been set up several months ago as a counterweight to Hamas. Madhoun recently said in an interview on a pro-Fatah radio station that he had executed several Hamas fighters and torched the homes of others.

The details of how he was killed were not immediately clear. However, earlier in the day, a prominent Hamas preacher had issued a religious edict, or fatwa, saying Hamas was entitled to kill Madhoun.

Witnesses said Hamas supporters paraded his body through the streets of Nusseirat refugee camp.

Mahdoun's death brought the death toll in Gaza fighting on Thursday to 21, hospital officials said. Among the dead were another 18 Fatah men whose bodies were found in the Preventative Security compound after it was seized by Hamas militants.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said earlier Thursday that the Islamic group was forced to wrest control from Fatah because its security services were corrupt and generated chaos. "Nothing is going to be changed in the social and cultural life of our people following the Islamic group's takeover of Gaza," Abu Zuhri insisted.

Abu Zuhri said Fatah fighters who surrendered their weapons would not be harmed.

Hamas widened its onslaught earlier in the day to include Fatah-linked broadcast outlets. Fatah-allied Voice of Palestine Radio was on fire after Hamas attacked it, Palestine TV reported, but the station continued broadcasting from its Ramallah facilities.

Two local radio stations, Al Hurriya and Al Shabab, shut down in the morning after Hamas threatened to blow up all radio and TV stations belonging to collaborators.

Earlier Thursday, Palestinian security officials said an Israeli tank shell killed five children traveling in a car near the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, but the Israel Defense Forces denied any shelling in the area.

Gaza hospital workers said the children were all siblings, under 16 years old, from the Abu Matrok family. The driver of the car was also killed the security officials said.

Earlier Thursday, Hamas fighters captured the second of four major Fatah command centers in Gaza City, bringing the group closer to their goal of complete conquest of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas gunmen planted the Islamic group's green flag on the roof of the intelligence services building shortly after taking control over the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

Earlier in the day, Hamas overran the Preventive Security building, and witnesses, a doctor and Fatah officials said several Fatah fighters had been shot in the head.

The Islamist group later called on Fatah fighters to surrender another key security installation in Gaza City within the hour. The call to give up the National Security compound was broadcast on Hamas radio.

"We are telling our people that the past era has ended and will not return," Islam Shahawan, a spokesman for Hamas' militia, told Hamas radio. "The era of justice and Islamic rule has arrived."

Abu Zuhri heralded what he called Gaza's second liberation, after Israel's 2005 evacuation of the coastal strip.

"This time it was liberated from the herds of the collaborators," he said of Fatah, which has pursued peace negotiations with Israel. "Last time, it was liberated from the herds of the settlers."

Hamas gunmen broke through Fatah defenses at the compound in Gaza City on Thursday morning. They fired rocket-propelled grenades at the compound, provoking return fire from Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' presidential guard.

The rival factions have been engaged in bloody battles since Sunday, resulting in the deaths of at least 70 people. By noon Thursday, at least eight people had been killed. Al-Jazeera TV reported early Thursday afternoon that the death toll had climbed to at least 16.

Fatah officials said seven of their fighters were shot dead in the street outside Preventive Security building. A witness, Jihad Abu Ayad, said the men were being killed before their wives and children.

"They are executing them one by one," Abu Ayad said. "They are carrying one of them on their shoulders, putting him on a sand dune, turning him around and shooting."

Some of the Hamas fighters kneeled down outside the building, touching their foreheads to the ground in prayer. Others led Fatah fighters out of the building, some of them shirtless or in their underwear, holding their arms in the air. Several of the Fatah men flinched as the crack of gunfire split the air.


Abbas gives Fatah order to fight back
An aide to Abbas said earlier Thursday that the Fatah leader had issued the first orders to his elite guard to strike back against Hamas fighters.

Fatah forces had previously lashed out at Abbas, saying he left them with no directions and no support in the fight. Abbas' strongman in Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan, had been in Cairo for medical treatment. He returned to the West Bank city of Ramallah on Thursday afternoon.

Numerically superior Fatah forces have been crumbling fast under the onslaught by the better-armed and better-disciplined Hamas fighters.

"There will be no dialogue with Fatah, only the sword and the rifle," Nezar Rayyan, a senior Hamas official, told Hamas radio Thursday. "God willing, we will lead the Friday prayer in the president's office, and transform the [Gaza City] security complex into a big mosque."

Before dawn Thursday, Fatah fighters abandoned positions in central Gaza, then blew them up rather than turn them over as Hamas forces advanced.

Gaza hospitals were operating without water, electricity or blood units. Even holed up inside their homes, Gazans weren't able to escape fighting that turned so many apartment buildings into battlefields.

Angered by the rout of their comrades in the Gaza fighting, Palestinian security forces in the West Bank allied to Abbas have arrested at least three dozen Hamas gunmen.

Fatah gunmen shot and wounded three Hamas activists after kidnapping them. One of the wounded was identified as a Hamas member of Ramallah's municipal council and a second as a Hamas preacher from a nearby village.

Fatah leaders said a decision was made by security commanders to crack down on Hamas in the West Bank, to prevent it from taking any positions in that territory, a Fatah stronghold.

Abbas met Thursday with the decision-making bodies of the organization and the PLO, and was to make an important announcement later, aides said.

One aide, speaking on condition of anonymity because no decision had been made, said Abbas was considering dissolving the governing coalition with Hamas.

Earlier in the week, Fatah ministers suspended their activities in the government due to the Gaza violence, but stopped short of dismantling the partnership.

The unity government was formed in March in a bid to stem a previous round of violence, and in the hopes of easing the international boycott imposed in the wake of the Hamas election victory in January 2006. Neither aim was achieved.

The fighting continued despite an agreement Wednesday night by Abbas and Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas of the need to bring an end to the fighting between their respective parties.

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