GAZA CITY: Hamas on Wednesday named a fugitive suspect in a bomb attack on Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah, two days after the movement itself was accused of the Gaza attack.
Hamdallah was unhurt by the roadside blast that struck his convoy on March 13, in what Palestinian officials have called an assassination attempt as he entered the Hamas-run strip on a rare visit.
The interior ministry in Gaza on Wednesday said it was searching for Anas abu Koussa, born in 1993, describing him as the lead suspect.
It did not give a possible motive for the attack on Hamdallah, head of government in president Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority.
A Hamas security source said investigators had arrested and were questioning three people, including two members of the PA-run intelligence services.
Another security source said he believed radical Salafist Muslims had planted the bomb, which lightly injured six people.
Hamas and the West Bank-based PA have been bitter rivals for a decade since the movement seized control of Gaza.
The bomb appears to have brought to an end hopes for an already floundering reconciliation deal between Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah party, which dominates the PA.
On Monday Abbas accused Hamas of being behind the blast and said he would take new measures in response, without specific details.
Meanwhile, Palestinians took part in a protest in Gaza City on Wednesday against Abbas's statement in which he accused Hamas of carrying out a bomb attack against prime minister Rami Hamdallah in Gaza last week, as well as threatening fresh sanctions against them.
Hamas names suspect in bomb attack on prime minister
Hamas names suspect in bomb attack on prime minister
Algeria says army kills four ‘terrorists’
The Algerian defense ministry said the army killed four “terrorists” on Sunday in a mountainous region of the northwest.
A ministry statement said the operation was still ongoing in the Djebel Amrouna area about 130 kilometers (80 miles) west of Algiers.
It said soldiers had “eliminated four terrorists,” and seized four Kalashnikov assault rifles and ammunition.
The army regularly announces the arrests or deaths of “terrorists,” the authorities’ term for armed Islamists still active since the North African country’s 1992-2002 civil war.
Despite a 2005 Charter for Peace and Reconciliation aimed at turning the page on the violence, armed groups continue to mount sporadic attacks.
The so-called “black decade” of the civil war officially left 200,000 people dead.
According to the defense ministry, so far this year the army has “killed 21 terrorists, captured 8 others, and 38 terrorists have repented.”
It said “369 individuals supporting terrorist groups were arrested” in the same period, and more than 100 weapons were recovered.
