Fatah Members Rally Against Corruption

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- Thousands of members of the ruling Fatah Party, which badly lost Palestinian parliament elections to Hamas this week, burned cars and shot in the air in demonstrations across the Gaza Strip, demanding the resignation of corrupt officials and insisting that Fatah form no coalition with Hamas.

About 1,000 angry party activists, including 100 gunmen, drove by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' resident in Gaza, calling from loudspeakers for all corrupt leaders to step down and urging Abbas not to form a coalition with Hamas. Abbas was in the West Bank town of Ramallah at the time.

''We don't want to join the Hamas government. We don't want corrupt leadership. We want reform and we want to fire all the corrupt,'' one group of thousands of people gathered outside a Palestinian government building in Gaza City said. Several gunmen shot in the air.