Hamas arrests Egyptian officer who snuck into Gaza

Hamas-run police arrested and deported a high-ranking Egyptian officer who snuck into the Gaza Strip, as the group's ties with Cairo continued to fray.

Hamas-run police arrested and deported a high-ranking Egyptian officer who had snuck into the Gaza Strip, the interior minister said today, as the group's ties with Cairo continued to fray. "The security services have arrested a high-ranking Egyptian officer who infiltrated the Gaza Strip to gather intelligence about the Palestinian people, the government and other matters," Hamas interior minister Fathi Hamad was quoted as saying in Falasteen, a newspaper with close ties to Hamas.

He said the officer had been sent back to Egypt and called for a joint committee to coordinate security matters, instead of "officers breaching the Palestinian security barrier." The interior ministry could not immediately be reached for comment. Hamas's relations with Cairo, its main intermediary with the outside world, have worsened in recent months as Egypt is building an underground security fence along its border with Gaza to rein in smuggling.

Earlier this month, Hamas accused Egypt of torturing Palestinian prisoners, including a brother of one of the group's main spokesmen, who Hamas said was tortured to death in an Egyptian prison in October. "Egypt should direct its investigations against the (Israeli) occupation and how its individuals infiltrate the Palestinian territories and Egypt," Mr Hamad said in the newspaper interview. "It should side with the Palestinian people and neither send officers to infiltrate Gaza to gather intelligence about the resistance nor torture Palestinian detainees to get intelligence about Gaza," he added.

Gaza has been under a strict Israeli blockade since Hamas ? which is blacklisted as a terror group by the European Union and the United States ? seized power in June 2007. Egypt has also largely sealed its border with Gaza, but until last year had mostly turned a blind eye to the vast network of smuggling tunnels that provide a crucial lifeline to Hamas as well as Gaza's civilian population. Cairo has also brokered reconciliation talks between Hamas and its rivals in the secular Fatah movement as well as negotiations with Israel for a prisoner exchange for a captive soldier.

* AFP