Damaged vehicle of the convoy of Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah is seen after an explosion in the northern Gaza Strip Thomson Reuters GAZA (Reuters) - Gaza's ruling Hamas group blamed Palestinian Authority officials on Saturday for the attempted assassination in the enclave of Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah on March 13. pic.twitter.com/EDZOEBuqPi — Khaled Abu Toameh (@KhaledAbuToameh) April 28, 2018

Continued finger-pointing over the roadside bomb attack on Hamdallah's convoy looks likely to deepen the already bitter political rift. Abbas blamed the attack on Hamas soon after the incident in Gaza, in which Hamdallah, who has spearheaded efforts by the Authority to reconcile with Hamas, was not injured. But Eyad al-Bozom, spokesman for the Hamas-run interior ministry in Gaza, told a news conference on Saturday that three senior officers of Abbas’s West Bank-based Palestinian Authority had masterminded the blast. Reuters was unable to independently verify the allegations and the Authority rejected Hamas’s accusation. Three men identified by Hamas as suspects involved in the bombing were killed in a shootout with its forces in Gaza on March 22. The Gaza Interior Ministry presented video confessions by four men it is holding in custody, who it said were part of that cell guided by the PA officers, who are based in the West Bank. It presented no further evidence. The explosion put an end to an already faltering reconciliation agreement between Hamas and secularists Fatah, which dominates the PA.

Hamas: Palestinian Authority General Intelligence Service was behind the bombing of the convoy of PM Rami Hamdallah in Gaza Strip last month. Khalil al-Hayya, deputy head of Hamas in Gaza, told a separate news conference that the suspects “wanted to kill reconciliation”. We are not accusing the Palestinian Intelligence, but in the course of our investigation we discovered that Brigadier-General Baha Balousha of the intelligence department orchestrated the attack.”

Al-Bozom said the suspected Palestinian Authority officers were also behind an attempt to kill Hamas’s head of security Tawfeeq Abu Naeem in October in Gaza. A spokesman for the Authority’s security services blamed Hamas for the March 13 blast. “The more Hamas tries to evade responsibility, the deeper it sinks,” Adnan al-Dmairi told Reuters by telephone.
Hamas accuses the Palestinian Authority of performing a bombing against its own Prime Minister, Rami Hamdallah. Hamdallah escaped injury when his convoy was bombed during a visit to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip last month.