Yasser Arafat’s interim successor escaped injury in a Gaza gunfight triggered by hostile militants on Sunday as Palestinian officials set Jan. 9 for elections to replace the late president and avert a feared power vacuum. The clash at a mourning tent set up for Arafat was the latest sign of factional anarchy challenging would-be moderate heirs to Arafat who are favored by Washington as potential peacemakers with Israel but lack a popular power base.

The incident began after gunmen from Arafat’s splintered Fatah movement shouting “No to Abu Mazen” – Abbas’s nickname – marched by him as he stood outside the tent, paused and began firing shots into the air. The gunmen’s rifles were pointed upwards, not at Abbas and Palestinian officials said it was not an assassination attempt.

Members of Arafat’s presidential guard hustled Abbas, 69, into the tent and threw him to the ground for his safety as the militants burst in. Chaos ensued as gunmen and bodyguards began shooting at each other. In the end, two bodyguards lay dead and four other Palestinians were wounded, medics said.

As gunfire blazed about him, Abbas was hustled to safety in his local office. The gunmen withdrew and no one was arrested. “We were paying condolences. Emotions were high. There was random gunfire and pushing in the crowd,” a calm-looking Abbas told reporters at his office afterward. “There was chaos and there was previous chaos (in Gaza), and perhaps that was one of the reasons leading to today’s events.”

Abbas is disliked by militants because he advocates a negotiated peace with Israel and has condemned suicide bombings and other violence in a 4-year-old Palestinian uprising. He has been chosen chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the highest Palestinian decision-making body, and is tipped as the presidential candidate of Fatah. “There will be free and direct elections to elect the president of the Palestinian National Authority on Jan. 9, 2005,” interim president Rawhi Fattouh told reporters.

Palestinian leadership changes and President Bush’s re-election have revived hope for talks although Israel’s rightist government is sticking to a unilateral plan to quit occupied Gaza while sealing its grip on much of the West Bank.

During his first term, Bush took Israel’s lead in boycotting ex-guerrilla leader Arafat as an alleged obstacle to peace and drew global criticism that it was neglecting Middle East diplomacy and leaving a void filled with violence. Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom left on Saturday for the United States, where he and Secretary of State Colin Powell were expected to discuss the new situation in the region.