Hamas accuses the Palestinian Authority of kidnaping members
Palestine, Politics, 10/8/2005

Palestinian gunmen released three activists from the Islamic resistance movement Hamas that they had kidnapped in various areas of the West Bank.

The leading figure of Hamas in Toulkarem and rector of the engineering faculty at al-Najah university in Nablus, Riad al-Raas, was released in addition to the two Hamas activists Hassan Safi and Basem Obeidi who were respectively kidnapped in Toulkarem, Bethlehem and Hebron, hours after one unidentified group calling itself "the groups of al-Farouk Omar Bin al-Khattab in Palestine" claimed responsibility for that.

The group alleged in a statement that the kidnapping came as a retaliation to the violations made by Hamas of the law and the order, and the Hamas attack on the headquarters and members of the Palestinian security. But one of the released men, Hassan Safi said that his kidnappers are members in al-Aqsa martyrs groups of the Fatah movement and he was able to recognize them.

However, the representative of the Hamas movement in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, accused in a statement the Palestinian general intelligence of being behind this operation.

In response to that, the Palestinian intelligence accused Hamas of violating national unity.

These developments came amid a state of tension in the Palestinian territories over acts of violence between Hamas members and the Palestinian police forces in Gaza. These resulted in killing three persons including one army officer and injuring other scores.

In this regard, Hamas threatened to withdraw from the "higher follow up committee of the Palestinian groups in Gaza" after the latter issued a statement in which it held the Hamas responsible for the recent incidents that took place in Gaza.

The spokesman for the movement Sami Abu Zihri said in a statement that the statement of the "follow up committee" came with the absence of the Hamas movement, which means "the committee does not represent the committee as a whole."

The statement considered that "the statement is unbalanced because it ignored many issues including the reasons which led to the explosions in incidents that started with the attack against the son of martyr Abdul Aziz al-Ranteisi."

Previous Stories:
  Hamas official kidnapped   (10/7/2005)
  Palestinian parliament wants new government   (10/4/2005)
  Three Palestinians killed in fight between Hamas, authorities   (10/3/2005)

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