PALESTINE - Dec 11 - Fatah Official's Sons Shot Dead In Gaza.

Palestinian gunmen kill the three young sons of a senior intelligence official close to Pres Mahmoud Abbas in the Gaza Strip, reigniting fears of an escalation in factional clashes. There was no claim of responsibility for the attack but officials from Abbas' Fatah party blamed Hamas, which runs the PA. Fatah's parliamentary faction issued a statement urging Abbas to dismiss the Hamas government, "which is pushing us with its policies and programmes to civil war". Masked gunmen attacked a car carrying the children to school with some 60 bullets, killing the three boys aged between three and nine and their driver. Col Baha Balousha, the boys' father who was not in the car, was a leading interrogator during a Fatah crackdown on Hamas in the late 1990s. Muhammad Dahlan, another former Fatah security official, said at the funerals on Dec 11: This is not an assassination, it's a massacre. We are not pointing our fingers at anyone, especially in this massacre. But the criminals behind dozens of previous crimes are known and the [Hamas-run] Interior Ministry has not acted against them". Dahlan, who commands the loyalty of Fatah's armed factions in Gaza, has previously accused Hamas of assassinating political rivals since the Islamic movement took power in March. In recent days he has been tipped to head a new Palestinian National Security Council being created by Abbas, a move likely to be fiercely opposed by Hamas. Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, called the attack an "awful, ugly crime against innocent children", saying it was aimed at undermining Palestinian unity by creating confusion. In the chaos of Gaza, it is often difficult for security forces to disentangle criminal motives from political aims. But the latest attack comes amid increased political tension. Aides to Abbas said the President was close to dismissing the government run by Hamas, which has been the target of a western aid boycott leading to sharp poverty in the occupied territories. But it was unclear whether Abbas had the legal powers to dismiss the government as urged to do so by the west. Although he has repeatedly stated his desire to prevent civil war, months of negotiations on a national unity government have floundered. In Brussels, the European Commission on Monday proposed a three-month extension of a special aid mechanism created to bypass Hamas. EU foreign ministers were expected to urge again the formation of a national unity government.