GAZA - Palestinian Prime Minister and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Saturday ordered all gunmen and security men involved in deadly clashes in the Gaza Strip to get off the streets.

Gunbattles between police and militants on Friday, during which three people died, posed a major challenge for Islamist militant group Hamas days after it took over running the Palestinian government.

Clashes broke out when members of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), an umbrella group of militants that often fires rockets into Israel, accused Palestinian security forces close to President Mahmoud Abbas of helping Israel kill a top member of their faction in a car blast.

Israel's army denied involvement in the explosion.

Haniyeh said his government, which beat Abbas's Fatah in a January election and now controls tens of thousands of security officers, had decided to remove gunmen from the streets in order to end tension.

"What happened was dangerous and must not be repeated," Haniyeh told reporters.
"The culture that dominated the Palestinian street in past years is a culture that needs time in order to turn into a culture that keeps law and order and does not resort to using arms under any condition," he added.

The PRC said it had agreed to follow Haniyeh's call.

Palestinian Preventive Security Chief Rashid Abu Shbak later met with both the incoming and outgoing interior ministers in Gaza and said the gunmen had left the streets.

"I do not think there are gunmen anymore," he told reporters. "The incident is over at the moment and I hope there will be no more consequences."

The lawlessness followed a general increase in violence.

A Palestinian suicide bomber killed four Israelis in the West Bank on Thursday. Israel has carried out repeated strikes on what it said were rocket launch sites in Gaza, while local militants fired several rockets into the Jewish state.

Hamas, an Islamic group sworn to Israel's destruction and which has carried out about 60 suicide bombings against the Jewish state since 2000, has largely avoided involvement in internal Palestinian fighting.

Although Hamas has largely respected a truce for the past year, it has refused to give up its own weapons and renounce violence, as demanded by Israel, the United States and other major powers.

Tension has risen between Hamas and Fatah since the January 25 election ended decades of domination over Palestinian politics by Abbas's movement.

One Fatah-affiliated militant group, the Knights of the Tempest, called on the government to bring Palestinians suspected of cooperating with Israel to justice, or they would opt to chase them and "bring to trial" the people themselves.