A fierce firefight between members of two rival clans killed at least four Palestinians and wounded many others in northern Gaza on Saturday, local medics and witnesses said.

The fighting began in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun on Thursday for unknown reasons and degenerated into a pitched battle involving automatic weapons, grenades and anti-tank rockets by Saturday, said the sources.

A policeman was among the killed and one of his colleagues wounded as police struggled in vain to contain the violence to impose order, added the sources.

Witnesses said that many people, including mediators and bystanders, were wounded, some seriously, as bullets and grenades flew in a neighborhood of the town of Beit Hanoun, adding the fighting was still underway on Saturday evening.

Observers said the clash was a further example of lawlessness in the Palestinian territories where are plagued by crime and civil unrest and seen as a testing ground for future Palestinian statehood after Israel withdrew from Gaza last September following 38 years of military rule.

Source: Xinhua