Fatah leader and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud was expected to order his troops to retaliate yesterday against Hamas's violent take over of the Gaza Strip, but instead, the Islamist group seized one of the last Fatah strongholds in the Strip: the National Security headquarters in Gaza City. At least 21 Fatah men were killed.

Hamas's onslaught on the building took place just as the organization was taking control of other key security compounds in the city, as well as over the southern Gaza town of Rafah.

One of those facilities was the Preventative Security compound in Gaza, where Hamas militants, after they finally punched through Fatah's defenses and stormed the building, found 18 Fatah men who had been killed in the battle.

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Hamas also killed two other Fatah militants, as well as a prominent Fatah gunman who had once bragged about executing Hamas fighters and torching the homes of rivals.

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 that Hamas was entitled to kill Madhoun.

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

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

Hamas political leaders in the organization's headquarters in Syria refused to comment on the group's intentions now that it has consolidated control over the coastal strip. But Abu Zuhri said that Fatah fighters who surrendered their weapons would not be harmed.

Hamas also widened its onslaught to include Fatah-linked media outlets. The Fatah-affiliated Voice of Palestine Radio office in Gaza was on fire after Hamas attacked it, Palestine TV reported, but the station continued broadcasting from its Ramallah facilities.

An Egyptian official reported that 99 Fatah policemen have so far fled from the Strip into Egypt. The policemen were border guards at the Rafah crossing and entered Egypt through this facility, which is the main border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, according to 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.