As Islamist gunmen mopped up his routed forces in Gaza, Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed the Palestinian government on Thursday and declared a state of emergency after six days of bloody faction fighting.
But as the United States rallied support for Abbas, Hamas fighters stormed remaining strongholds of his secular Fatah group in the Gaza Strip, leaving the presidential compound the last bastion of Abbas's authority in the enclave.
The violence has ripped apart Palestinian hopes for a state.
Hamas said Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, of Hamas, would ignore his dismissal decreed by Abbas in the West Bank. Jubilant Hamas men hunted down Fatah loyalists in Gaza, killing some and parading one top militant's mutilated body through the streets.
Abbas said in a statement he was "declaring a state of emergency in all the lands of the Palestinian Authority because of the criminal war in the Gaza Strip ... and military coup."
Medics said at least another 30 people were killed during the day, taking the death toll since Saturday to over 110 in a civil war that has ripped apart Palestinians' hopes for a state and leaves an aggressive Islamist entity on Israel's borders.
Abbas, the successor to the late Yasser Arafat who embraced negotiation with Israel to try to found a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, said he would form an emergency cabinet to rule by decree and held out the prospect of early elections.
But gun law not the constitution held sway in Gaza.
Gunmen hoisted green Islamist flags over Fatah buildings and pounded a Abbas' Gaza compound with heavy weaponry.
The White House accused them of "acts of terror" and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Abbas to emphasize support for Palestinian "moderates" but admitted that finding troops for any international force for Gaza would be tough.
Some of Gaza's impoverished 1.5 million people view with trepidation the success of religious rulers set on defying a crippling Israeli and Western embargo on the Strip. But Hamas, which enjoys support from Iran and Syria, has many supporters.
Rice's spokesman said she had "underlined U.S. support for President Abbas, for Palestinian moderates who made the commitment to working with the Israeli government, working with others around the world on the issue of peace."
Analysts believe that could signal an easing of year-old anti-Hamas sanctions on the West Bank to bolster Abbas.
PRISONERS
Casualty figures are unclear, as was the fate of Fatah fighters seen led away, bare-chested, after surrendering. There were unconfirmed reports of prisoners being shot.
A Fatah official in Gaza said he had seen eight colleagues gunned down while he escaped death "by a miracle."
Hamas's armed wing issued a statement saying it had "executed" Samih al-Madhoun of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a close ally of Abbas's top security aide Mohammad Dahlan. His body was later dragged through a Gaza refugee camp.
For Hamas fighters, some in camouflage uniforms, the fall of the security headquarters was a cause for celebration. They fired gunshots in the air to seal their victory and handed out chocolates to local people in the coastal enclave.
"Allahu akbar!" (God is Greatest) one chanted through a megaphone from the roof of the beachfront headquarters of Fatah's intelligence service, captured later in the day.
Others paraded in the streets and showed off weaponry seized from Fatah, whose forces the United States has helped train and arm in a bid to counter the rise of Hamas -- to little effect.
Diplomats told Reuters that an aide to Abbas had admitted that hundreds of Fatah's men ran from the battle or ran out of bullets during the fighting. Those in Abbas's own presidential compound in Gaza were among the few still holding out.
The Islamist group said it had also swept control of other Fatah strongholds across Gaza. Pro-Fatah broadcasts went off the air and the Voice of Palestine radio station was set ablaze.
Some Fatah gunmen retaliated against Hamas in the West Bank, shooting and wounding a Hamas man near Ramallah, seizing Hamas supporters in the towns of Jenin and in Nablus, where they also stormed a Hamas office and hurled its computers out the window.
Even businesses owned by Hamas supporters were targeted by angry crowds in the territory occupied by Israel, where some 2.5 million Palestinians live, in the hills around Jerusalem.
Hamas won a parliamentary election last year, triggering Western sanctions on the whole of the Palestinian Authority.
(Additional reporting by Mohammed Assadi and Wafa Amr in Ramallah and Ori Lewis, Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Jeffrey Heller and Alastair Macdonald in Jerusalem)
