Hamas widens probe into bomb attack on PM

Gaza City, March 14: Gaza’s Islamist rulers Hamas widened an investigation Wednesday into a bomb explosion that targeted Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah as he made a rare visit to the strip a day earlier.

The interior ministry in Gaza said it had launched a “high- level investigative committee” into the bomb attack, which was a further blow to faltering reconciliation talks between Hamas and president Mahmud Abbas’s secular Fatah party.

It said a number of suspects were being questioned after the roadside bomb targeted Hamdallah’s convoy shortly after he entered Gaza, leaving him uninjured but lightly wounding six guards.

It did not provide further details on the investigation Wednesday or release the identity of the suspects.

“The door is open to anyone who wants to participate in the investigation,” Tawfeeq Abu Naim, the head of the Hamas security services in Gaza, said in a statement.

A minister in Hamdallah’s government told Voice of Palestine radio that Hamas informed them there were two 15- kilogramme ( 33- pound) bombs, the second of which was planted 30 metres ( yards) away but failed to explode.

A senior official told AFP on condition of anonymity that Abbas decided no members of Hamdallah’s government would travel to Gaza in the short term “due to the security problems”.

A number of officials have been travelling to the enclave in recent months to discuss reconciliation.

Hamas seized control of Gaza from Abbas’s internationally recognised government more than a decade ago but agreed in October to hand power back.