GAZA: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s government accidentally paid salaries to almost half the members of rival Hamas’s security force before noticing the error, officials said yesterday.
They said Abbas’s finance ministry ordered Tuesday’s payouts to 2,600 members of the Hamas Executive Force to be reversed, but hundreds of fighters had managed to withdraw funds.
“To their surprise, they got phone calls telling them to get their salaries. They rushed to the bank,” said an official in the Hamas-led administration in Gaza.
The Executive Force routed Abbas’s secular Fatah faction in a Gaza civil war in June. That led the president to fire the Hamas-led government and form a Western-backed cabinet that has received foreign donor aid denied the Islamists.
Abbas’s cabinet secretary Sadi al-Kronz said: “This issue was dealt with, and we have no comment.” - Reuters |
