GAZA CITY — A fierce gun battle erupted Monday outside the Palestinian parliament building between rival Palestinian forces, killing one man, wounding about a dozen people and deepening the sense of anarchy gripping the Gaza Strip.
Passersby scattered in panic as gunmen -- some belonging to a new Hamas-led police force and others to a unit loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas -- crouched against graffiti-covered walls and behind parked cars, firing round after round from their automatic rifles and launching rocket-propelled grenades in each other's direction.
A driver for the Jordanian ambassador in Gaza was killed by a stray bullet in the fighting, which raged nearly two hours in broad daylight in the run-down heart of Gaza City. Each faction denied starting the shootout.
As the din of fighting rose, civilian cars, many carrying families, made screeching U-turns to get away from the battle scene. A small group of veiled women fled on foot, the tears of one streaming from beneath the black covering that swathed most of her face.
"How can we continue like this?" she said, her breath ragged with sobs.
The spiraling violence was expected to figure prominently in discussions today at the White House between President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
The Bush administration and Olmert's government are grappling with the question of how to deal with the Hamas-dominated Palestinian government and the moderate-minded Abbas, who was elected separately a year before the Islamic militant group's upset victory in January.
Tensions in Gaza have been mounting since Hamas took power in March. They soared last week when Hamas sent a new, 3,000-member police force into the streets, defying Abbas' veto of its deployment. Since then, gunmen from the Hamas contingent and those of Abbas' Fatah faction have engaged in an uneasy standoff, narrowly eyeing each other while laying claim to adjacent street corners.
Recent days have brought a steady drumbeat of ambush-style shootings and other attacks.
On Saturday someone tried to assassinate a senior security chief, an ally of Abbas, who was gravely injured when a booby-trapped elevator exploded in his heavily guarded compound. Fatah officials stopped just short of blaming Hamas.
The next day, a bomb was disarmed on a road used by another senior Fatah-allied security chief.
