Hamas- and Fatah-affiliated gunmen engaged in a shootout at the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza City yesterday, leaving three persons wounded in spite of efforts by both parties to defuse a crisis over control of the security services.

It was the second day of violent clashes between the groups, which battled politically for control of the Palestinian parliament in January elections.

As Egyptian mediators brokered talks between the rival groups over the weekend, thousands of Fatah gunmen marched in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to protest Hamas’ decision to appoint its own police chief and to set up a new branch of the security services.

The unrest underscores the deterioration of what was already a fragile security situation as Hamas, which won the January elections, struggles to take charge of the Fatah-dominated bureaucracy.

The Health Ministry melee erupted after a group of Fatah members, some of them armed, arrived at the ministry to request government assistance for relatives in need of medical treatment abroad. After they were advised of Hamas Health Minister Bassem Naim’s decision to cut about $2 million in subsidies for foreign medical treatment, the gunmen fired into the air.

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