GAZA/RAMALLAH, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- Islamic Hamas movement and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party on Saturday traded accusations over deadly clashes that claimed the lives of 22 people in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

    The clashes erupted Friday afternoon when an al-Qaida-inspired Imam announced the birth of an Islamic emirate in defiance of the moderate Islamic Hamas movement that has ruled the territory for the past two years.

    Hamas sent troops to Rafah city in southern Gaza Strip to arrest the Imam, whose supporters called him Abu Noor al-Maqdisi, but the move sparked fighting that ended this morning with the death of al-Maqdisi, a local commander of Hamas, six Hamas policemen and six civilians in addition to a number of the Imam's followers.

    Ismail Haneya, Hamas' Prime Minister, implicitly accused Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), of encouraging such extremist group to create disorder in the Gaza Strip.

    "After the failure of the war and the siege on Gaza, some side exploited young men and fed them with strange ideology to regard killing as lawful," Haneya said during a workshop aired on Hamas's satellite channel.

    He explained that al-Maqdisi's followers, who called themselves Jund Anssar Allah (Warriors of God), "have assaulted the government, deemed it infidel, took up arms against it" and so the security forces have cracked down on the fighters.

    Earlier, Hamas' Interior Ministry has openly accused the Fatah-backed security services of the PNA, based in the West Bank, of sponsoring those rebels in a bid to restore their control of Gaza.

    Meanwhile, Fatah's central committee, the highest decision-making body of Fatah, said Hamas was trying to "transcribe the Somali and Afghani experience in the Gaza Strip."

    "Hamas is behind the killings and destruction and it has opened the door for the new foreign gangs who came to our home," said a statement by the newly-elected committee following its second meeting, headed by President Abbas.

    The statement added that Hamas used underground tunnels beneath the borders between Gaza and Egypt to allow the foreign fighters, who mostly worked in Afghanistan and Iraq, to enter Gaza.

    On Friday, Haneya denied the existence of any foreign combatants and said Israel was behind these reports aimed to harm Hamas' reputation.