‘They were running from their own people’: At least 27 killed in violent clashes in Gaza Citypublished at 18:48 BST 12 October
Breaking
Rushdi Abualouf
Gaza correspondent, in Istanbul
At least 27 people have been killed in fierce clashes between Hamas security forces and armed members of the Dughmush family in Gaza City, in one of the most violent internal confrontations since the end of major Israeli operations in the enclave.
Masked gunmen from Hamas exchanged fire with militants near the Jordanian hospital in southern Gaza City.
Witnesses said that, according to a senior official in the Hamas-run Interior Ministry, security units surrounded an armed militia inside the city and engaged in heavy fighting to detain its members.
The ministry said eight members of the security forces were killed in what it described as “an armed assault by a militia”.
Local medical sources said that 19 members of the Dughmush clan were killed, along with eight Hamas fighters, since the fighting began Saturday.
Eyewitnesses said the clashes erupted in the Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood after a Hamas force of more than 300 fighters moved to storm a residential block where Dughmush gunmen were entrenched.
Residents described scenes of panic as dozens of families fled their homes under heavy gunfire, many of them displaced multiple times during the war.
“This time people weren’t fleeing Israeli attacks,” one resident said. “They were running from their own people.”
The Dughmush family, one of Gaza’s most prominent clans, has long had a tense relationship with Hamas, and its armed members have clashed with the group on several occasions in the past.
The Hamas-run interior ministry said its forces are in the way to restored order, warning that “any armed activity outside the framework of the resistance” would be dealt with firmly.
Both sides traded accusations over who was responsible for triggering the clashes.
Hamas said that Dughmush gunmen killed two of its fighters and wounded five others, prompting the group to launch an operation against them.
However, a source from the Dughmush family told local media that Hamas forces had come to a building that once served as the Jordanian Hospital, where the family had taken refuge after their homes in the al-Sabra neighbourhood were destroyed in a recent Israeli attack.
The source claimed that Hamas sought to evict the family from the building to establish a new base for its forces there.
