Gaza City: A local Salafist leader was shot dead in Gaza City Tuesday during a confrontation with Hamas security forces as tensions mounted between the Strip`s Islamist rulers and its extremist opponents.
The violence came as Hamas police and security forces stepped up measures against militants belonging to Islamic extremist groups, some of whom are known as Salafists.
The incident occurred during an arrest operation in the northern Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood with Gaza`s interior ministry identifying the gunman as local Salafist leader Yussef al-Hanar, 27.
Some witnesses identified him as a Salafist leader while others said he belonged to a group affiliated with the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group.
"Security forces barricaded the house and then violent clashes erupted," they told AFP.
Interior ministry spokesman Iyad Buzum said the fighting began when security forces went to his house to arrest him for unspecified "illegal activities".
Hanar tried to flee, firing as he went. He also tried to blow himself up with a suicide vest but was shot dead before it detonated, Buzum told AFP, saying he had "tried to booby-trap his house".
Police found "explosive belts, explosive devices and rocket-propelled grenades" in the premises, he said. Around 200 mourners attended the funeral, with Hanar`s body buried in a black flag similar to that of the IS movement, an AFP correspondent said.
"They blew up the house and killed him because of his opinions," his mother Bassima told AFP, saying her son was married with three children and had "never hurt anybody".
"Hamas is responsible" for his death, she added.
Since last summer, when Israel and Hamas fought a deadly 50-day war in and around Gaza, there have been growing signs of internal unrest between Hamas security forces and extremist splinter groups.
Experts have warned that the growing appeal of jihadist groups, particularly among Gaza`s disaffected youth, could trigger a new explosion of violence in the enclave which has been ravaged by three wars with Israel in the past six years.
Since August, a spate of explosions has targeted officials and buildings affiliated with Hamas, the rival Fatah movement and international organisations.
Although few have been claimed, they are believed to be the work of radical Salafists unafraid to challenge Hamas.
Salafists are Sunni Muslims who promote a strict lifestyle based on that of early "pious ancestors". In Gaza they have made no secret of their disdain for Hamas over its observance of a tacit ceasefire with Israel and its failure to implement Islamic law.
Some attacks have been claimed by groups purporting to be linked to IS, although such claims have been largely discredited by online jihadist forums.Last week, militants from a group called "Supporters of IS in Ansar Beit al-Maqdis" claimed responsibility for three separate attacks in May, including a rocket attack on a base of Hamas armed wing the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades.
It also said its militants had fired a rocket at southern Israel on May 26, in defiance of a tacit truce observed by Hamas and prompting Israel to retaliate with air strikes.
A third attack targeted the car of a senior Hamas security official.
According to Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi from the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum on Islamist movements, the group is just one of a number of pro-IS entities operating within "a very fragmented Salafi jihadi movement in Gaza".
"The group may well have funnelled some specialists via Sinai to the Syria-Iraq arena to have representation in IS` ranks, but the group`s real significance on the ground is somewhat in doubt," he wrote earlier this year.
"Its membership may well comprise no more than a handful to a couple dozen individuals."
Experts warn that the appeal of such groups is growing, particularly among Gaza`s disaffected youth who have been particularly hard hit by the violence, grinding poverty and soaring unemployment and feel let down by traditional Palestinian nationalist movements.
During the war, dozens of young Palestinians with few prospects left Gaza to fight in Iraq or Syria, while others have been drawn towards jihadist groups involved in a deadly insurgency against Egyptian forces in the Sinai Peninsula.
But they have also been finding new recruits among the ranks of Hamas`s own security forces, many of whom are angry over the movement`s inability to pay them because of an ongoing financial crisis, Western experts say.
