Human rights groups accuse Hamas in prisoner deaths

GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinian human rights groups called for an investigation on Monday into the deaths of at least two Palestinians who they said were illegally detained and tortured by Hamas Islamists in the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction has accused Hamas of targeting its members in Gaza since the Islamist group routed Fatah forces and seized control of the coastal territory last month.

Hamas denies torturing prisoners and has accused Abbas's forces of detaining at least 300 Hamas members in the occupied West Bank, where Fatah remains dominant, and later releasing the bulk of them.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) said Waleed Abu Dhalfa, 42, died in a Hamas detention centre after he and his brother were abducted from their house in Gaza City last week by masked gunmen.

The PCHR said Hamas's armed wing "had no legal jurisdiction to make the arrest" and called for an "immediate probe into the circumstances of (Dhalfa's) death ... after he and his brother were tortured by their jailers".

A spokesman for Hamas's armed wing said Dhalfa, who he accused of being an Israeli informant, had not been tortured but had strangled himself as he tried to break free from his shackles.

Another group, the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizen's Rights, said a second Palestinian, Mohammad Dahmash, 31, died last week while being held in similar conditions. Hamas said Dahmash had committed suicide.

The group called on Hamas to allow human rights workers into the detention centers.

Hamas said it has launched investigations into some of the cases in which prisoners allege they were tortured.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Mohammed Assadi in Ramallah)