Palestinian students take exams amid fighting

Al Jazeera reports that violence erupted Sunday when - according to officials - Hamas members threw a Fatah member, who was also a presidential bodyguard, off the roof of an high building. Fatah retaliated by killing a prominent Hamas cleric. The conflict over the weekend throughout Gaza left five dead and 53 wounded reports Al Jazeera, which classified the violence as the worst since mid-May.

Witnesses said masked fighters from both Islamist Hamas and secular Fatah streamed onto the streets, setting up roadblocks and barriers to stop cars and check identification papers and pulling rival supporters from vehicles and houses.

Main roads were paralysed by the fighting, and shops and businesses closed early.

The internal violence also coincides with ongoing fighting between Israeli and Palestinian forces. The New York Times reports that militants from the Islamic Jihad and the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades — a militia loosely associated with Fatah — attacked Israeli soldiers at the Kissufim border crossing. The ensuing battle lasted several hours, leaving at least one Palestinian militant dead.

The Israelis responded by conducting air strikes against at least three buildings allegedly connected to the Islamic Jihad. However, reports vary greatly as to what purpose the buildings served.

An Israeli Army spokeswoman said the air force attacked one building used by the militant group Islamic Jihad and another building, which she described as a weapons-producing plant belonging to Fatah. Both groups had ties to the raid on Saturday, in which fighters for Islamic Jihad and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of the mainstream Fatah organization, crossed the border into Israel and fought with soldiers for hours, apparently in an attempt to capture one.

Palestinian medics said the Israeli strike on Sunday hit three locations and described them as a study center and a charitable association, both run by Islamic Jihad, and a privately owned metal workshop. Seven civilians were wounded, according to Dr. Muawiya Hassanein, director of emergency services in the Palestinian Health Ministry.

In the meantime, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called for an end to internal violence in Gaza, saying it was "was as damaging, if not more so, than the 40-year Israeli occupation," reports Agence France-Presse.

"What's happening in Gaza is regrettable and very harming. Both parties are working seriously with the Egyptian brothers to put an end to it," Abbas told reporters in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

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