GAZA (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Hamas Resistance fought a gun battle on Thursday with Palestinian security forces trying to arrest one of the group's senior political leaders, witnesses and security sources said.
The shooting erupted in the Gaza Strip after dozens of Hamas members surrounded the home of Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi when Palestinian police arrived to detain him.
At one point during the exchange of fire, Hamas members shot at a convoy of cars escorting Palestinian intelligence chief Amin al-Hindi, security sources said.
There were no immediate reports of casualties and Hindi was not in a car hit by gunfire, the sources said.
Dozens of Hamas members blocked Palestinian security forces from detaining Rantissi at his home. Calls to arms to defend Rantissi were broadcast over mosque loudspeakers in the neighborhood .
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, under international pressure to crack down on militants after a wave of Resistance bombings in Israel in the past month, has outlawed the military wings of Hamas and other groups and arrested dozens of militants.
A senior Palestinian security official said on Wednesday that the Palestinian Authority had since Monday arrested 12 of its own security men in an effort to rein in anti-Israeli militants.
``They were arrested for violating the cease-fire orders,'' he told Reuters. The detainees are members of Palestinian Authority security forces but also belong to a militant wing of Arafat's Fatah movement, a Palestinian security source said.
The gun battle in Gaza followed a day of relative calm in nearly 15 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence. Security chiefs from both sides met and Palestinian Resistance groups were said to be considering halting Resistance attacks against Israel.
Arafat has called for an end to Resistance bombings and armed attacks on Israelis.
Israeli military commanders and security service head Avi Dichter met the Palestinian Preventive Security chief in the West Bank, Jibril Rajoub, and other Palestinian officials on Wednesday night, sources from both sides said.
Details of the talks were not immediately available.