HAMAS CLAIMS TO HAVE FOILED FATAH ASSASSINATION PLOT

Hamas claims to have foiled Fatah plot to kill Haniya
GAZA CITY (AFP) - A senior Hamas leader on Saturday said the Islamist group had foiled a plot by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party to assassinate dismissed Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya.

Hamas-run police had arrested a would-be suicide bomber, who was a member of Fatah, former interior minister Said Siam told a press conference in Gaza City.

Siam said the Fatah plotters had planned to kill Haniya at Friday prayers.

Fatah spokesman Fahmi Zaarir rejected the accusation as “ridiculous” in a statement from the party’s headquarters in Ramallah.

During a raid on the house of an explosives expert involved in the plot, Hamas-run police had found “plans to assassinate prime minister Ismail Haniya during Friday prayers with a suicide bomber wearing an explosives belt,” Siam said.