Fatah torches Hamas MPs' office in West Bank

NABLUS, West Bank: Fatah-linked arsonists on Thursday set fire to an office used by Hamas MPs in the occupied West Bank, where factional fighting is beginning to spread from the Gaza Strip, witnesses said. Fatah activists stormed the office in an apartment block in the northern city of Nablus, vandalizing and then flinging furniture and documents out of the windows before setting the place ablaze, they said. The office is used as a headquarters for lawmakers representing the Islamist movement in the Nablus area, the witnesses said. On Wednesday, Fatah and Hamas loyalists traded fire in Nablus after fighters from the radical Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades – an armed group loosely affiliated to Fatah – surrounded a Hamas-run television production office. Eleven Hamas loyalists were briefly captured in what was the first such gunfight in the West Bank since the latest surge of inter-Palestinian violence erupted in Gaza where nearly 100 people have been killed in less than a week.