Palestinian police found a cache of arms belonging to the Hamas fundamentalist group in a building in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday.
The arsenal — hand grenades, ammunition, forged Israeli identity cards and electronic equipment, apparently for making bombs — was hidden in a compartment in a chicken coop, Israel Television reported.
Meanwhile, Palestinian officials denied reports that Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat was the target of an assassination attempt.
Earlier news reports that a bomb had been placed in Arafat’s Gaza City office and then safely dismantled were false, the officials said.
Relatedly, in the West Bank town of Ramallah, five Palestinian youths were injured during riots and exchanges of fire between rival Fatah groups.
A border police patrol tried to break up the confrontation.
Fatah leadership in the West Bank sharply condemned the fighting.
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