GAZA CITY: Gaza’s Hamas rulers, whose relations with Cairo are growing increasingly tense, on Wednesday accused Egypt of torturing Palestinian prisoners.
"They are subjected to horrible methods of torture, electrocuted, hung by their limbs for long periods, beaten," said Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for the Islamist movement.
"The situation of the detainees in the Egyptian prisons is catastrophic," he told AFP. "Arrests and torture are increasing."
He said 30 members of Palestinians factions, including 11 from Hamas, are held in Egyptian prisons, where they have served from one to six years.
Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s main opposition movement, and its relations with Egypt have become increasingly tense in recent weeks.
In another development, Hamas said their security forces defused an explosive device that had been placed close to the building in Gaza that housed the Egyptian representative’s offices until 2007, when the Palestinian Islamist movement seized power.
A Palestinian fisherman was fatally injured when his boat collided with an Egyptian security vessel off southern Gaza at dawn on Wednesday.
A son of the fisherman, who suffered minor injuries, said the security forces deliberately rammed the fishing vessel but Egypt said the collision was accidental.
In recent months Palestinian fishermen have been venturing into Egyptian waters in defiance of a crippling blockade Israel and Egypt have imposed since Hamas seized control of the coastal territory.
