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Palestinian crackdown on Qaeda supporters
Publish Date: Wednesday,10 February, 2010, at 10:07 PM Doha Time
Reuters/Ramallah/Gaza
Palestinian security forces detained six radical Islamists with
explosives in the West Bank in the first known arrests of Al Qaeda-inspired
militants in the territory, a senior Palestinian officer said.
In the Gaza Strip, controlled by a separate, Hamas-run administration,
the authorities announced the arrest of a leader of a pro-Al Qaeda group, the
latest sign of a crackdown on radicals accused of bombing security offices and
Internet cafes. The six men arrested in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since
1967, had been found in possession of explosives, Brigadier General Ibrahim
Ramadan of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority said yesterday. "The group
is under investigation. They carry the ideology of Al Qaeda but they do not
have a link to Al Qaeda," he said. The men were arrested over the past two
weeks, he said.
Several groups with a similar vision of Islam have emerged in the Gaza
Strip since Hamas seized control there in 2007.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah, prime minister of the Gaza-based government,
last week ordered security chiefs to "strike with an iron fist" against
fundamentalist groups believed to be behind recent bombings.
The Hamas-run Interior Ministry said the head of a fundamentalist group
known as the Jaljalat was arrested late on Tuesday and that several other
members of groups supporting Al Qaeda were detained in recent days.
"A preliminary investigation linked (him) to several if not all of the
bombing attacks against security offices and personnel and Internet cafes. He
is being interrogated," said Ehab al-Ghsain, spokesman for the Hamas-run
Interior Ministry.
Hamas security officials cited 12 bombings which they believed were
carried out by radical movements in recent weeks, the highest number of such
attacks since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip.
Vehicles belonging to two Hamas officials and the office of a Hamas
security service were blown up in the bombings. There were no casualties.
The Islamist groups, which want Islamic law to reign supreme in the Gaza
Strip, have denied responsibility for the bombings of targets which have
included Christian schools. Hamas, an Islamist group which shares the ideology
of the Muslim Brotherhood, seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 from Fatah
forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Ramallah-based Palestinian
Authority.
Hamas has stopped short of imposing Shariah in Gaza, a move that would
harm its popularity among Palestinians and deepen its isolation by the West
over its refusal to renounce violence and recognise Israel. Abu Abdallah
al-Maqdessi, a leader of one fundamentalist group, attributed the bombings to
internal disputes within Hamas. He said Hamas had detained more than 20 members
of the groups over the past several days. Last August, Hamas and al Qaeda
sympathisers fought a gun battle in which nearly 20 people were killed after a
leader of one radical group declared an Islamic emirate in the Gaza Strip.
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