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No battle was more indicative of Gaza’s hatreds and passions than the one at Preventive Security, one of Fatah’s four main security bases in the coastal strip. After Hamas fighters overran it in a hail of mortar and gunfire Thursday, they touched their heads to the ground in prayer and marched vanquished gunmen into the streets shirtless.

Preventive Security carried out a brutal crackdown on Hamas in 1996, and the militants never forgot it. Witnesses, Fatah officials and a doctor reported gangland-style executions of the defeated fighters Thursday.

“There is a history to it, a vendetta and a settling of scores,” said Palestinian lawmaker Hanan Ashrawi.

Fatah officials, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said Hamas shot dead seven Fatah fighters after they had surrendered. A doctor at Shifa Hospital said he examined two bodies that had been shot in the head at close range.

A witness named Amjad who lives in a high-rise building that overlooks the Preventive Security complex said men were killed in front of their wives and children.

“They are executing them one by one,” Amjad said in a telephone interview, declining to give his full name for fear of reprisals. “They are carrying one of them on their shoulders, putting him on a sand dune, turning him around and shooting.”

The killers, he said, ignored appeals from neighborhood residents to spare the men’s lives.

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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,282673,00.html